MARY CUSTIS LEE
CHAPTER
No.1864
UNITED DAUGHTERS
OFTHE
CONFEDERACY
I
JR
J&
PRESENTED TO THE
UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA
Los ANGELES
JUNE 3, 1928
To THE STUDENT OF OUR NATION'S HISTORY, THERE IS NO CHAPTER MORE INTER- ESTING OR THRILLING, THAN THE STOKY OF THE SOUTH AND THE GREAT ROLE IT HAS PLAYED IN OUH NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT.
HISTORY
OF THE
OF THE
SOUTHERN STATES.
5 the
HISTORY OF Th p SOUTHERN STATES
;\rED to RECORD the SOUTH'S PART in the MAKING "CAN NA'l
BETTY WASHINGTON Sister of George Washington
1
TV C01
Lbi PUB
THE SOUTH in the
Building of the Nation
HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN STATES
DESIGNED to RECORD the SOUTH'S PART in the MAKING of the AMERICAN NATION; to PORTRAY the CHARACTER and GENIUS, to CHRONICLE the ACHIEVEMENTS and PROG RESS and to ILLUSTRATE the LIFE and TRADITIONS of the SOUTHERN PEOPLE
VOLUME X
COMPLETE IN TWELVE VOLUMES
T^SOUTHERN HISTORICAL PUBLICATION SOCIETY
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
-t
Jt_
COPYRIGHT,
EY THE SOUTHERN HISTORICAL PUBLICATION SOCIETY
v.io
EDITORS-IN-CHIEF
I — History of the States
JULIAN ALVIN CARROLL CHANDLER, PhJX, LLJX
Professor of History, Richmond College
// — The Political History
FRANKLIN LAFAYETTE RILEY, A.M., PhJX
Professor of History, University of Mississippi
/// — The Economic History
JAMES CURTIS BALLAGH, PhJX, LLJX
Associate Professor of American History Johns Hopkins University
IV — The Literary and Intellectual Life
JOHN BELL HENNEMAN, M.A., PhJX
Professor of English Literature, University of the South
V — Fiction
EDWIN MIMS
Professor of English, University of North Carolina
VI — Oratory
Hon. THOMAS E. WATSON
Author of "Life of Thomas Jefferson," "Life of Napoleon," etc.
VII— The Social Life
SAMUEL CHILES MITCHELL, Ph.D., LL.D., D.D.
President of the University of South Carolina
VIII — Biography
WALTER LYNWOOD FLEMING, A.M., PhJX
Professor of History, Louisiana State University
History of the Social Life of the South
VOLUME X
CONTRIBUTORS
PART I
SOCIAL LIFE OF THE UPPER SOUTH
PHILIP ALEXANDER BRUCE, LL.B., author of The Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century.
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE LOWER SOUTH MONTROSE J. MOSES, B.S., author of The Literature of the South.
SOCIAL LIFE OF THE APPALACHIAN REGION MARTHA McCHESNEY BERRY, Director of the Berry School, Rome, Ga.
EUROPEAN INFLUENCES IN THE SOUTH
EDWIN MIMS, B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Professor of English Literature, Trin- ity College, Durham, N. C. ; editor South Atlantic Quarterly.
THE ARISTOCRACY OF THE NORTHERN NECK DOUGLAS S. FREEMAN, A.B., Richmond, Va.
THE OLD REGIME IN VIRGINIA
ARMISTEAD C. GORDON, LL.D., Rector of the University of Virginia; author of Congressional Currency; A Virginian of the Old School; etc.
PART H
THE RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH
THE ENGLISH IN THE SOUTH JOHN CALVIN METCALF, Professor of English, Richmond College.
THE FRENCH IN THE SOUTH
ALCEE FORTIER, Litt.D., Professor of Romance Languages, Tulane Uni- versity ; author of History of Louisiana, etc.
THE SPANISH IN THE SOUTH
CHARLES WOODWARD HUTSON, Member of American Historical As- sociation.
CONTRIBUTORS.
THE GERMANS IK THE SOUTH
J. HANNO DEILER, Professor Emeritus of German in the Tulane Uni- versity of Louisiana, New Orleans, La.
THE JEWS IN THE SOUTH
BARNETT A. ELZAS, LL.D., Rabbi of K.K. Beth Elohim, Charleston, S. C.
THE INDIAN IN THE SOUTH
CHARLES ALEXANDER EASTMAN (Ohiyesa), author of Indian Boy- hood, Old Indians Days, etc.
THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH
ALFRED HOLT STONE, LL.B., author of Studies in the American Race Problem.
PART III THE EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH
EDUCATION IN THE SOUTHERN COLONIES
FRANKLIN VERZELIUS NEWTON PAINTER, A.M., D.D., Professor of Pedagogy, Roanoke College, Salem, Va.
EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH BEFORE THE WAR
ROBERT BURWELL FULTON, A.M., LL.D., Superintendent of The Miller School, Virginia ; formerly Chancellor of University of Mis- sissippi and President of Southern Education Association.
EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINCE THE WAR
C. MITCHELL, Ph.D., LL.D., President of the University of South Carolina, Columbia, S. C.
HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH
JAMES H. KIRKLAND, Ph.D., LL.D., D.C.L., Chancellor of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn.
UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES OF THE SOUTH
GEORGE H. DENNY, A.M., Ph.D., LL.D., President of Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va.
THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN IN THE SOUTHERN STATES
MART K. BENEDICT, A.B., Ph.D., President of Sweet Briar College, Sweet Briar, Va.
SECONDARY EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH
WILLIAM H. HAND, Professor of Secondary Education, University ot South Carolina, Columbia, S. C.
ELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH
WILLIAM KNOX TATE, Principal of Memminger Normal School, Charles- ton, S. C.
NORMAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH
DAVID BANCROFT JOHNSON, A.M., LL.D., President of Winthrop Normal and Industrial College of South Carolina ; formerly Vice- President of National Teachers' Association.
MEDICAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH
GEORGE BEN JOHNSTON, M.D., LL.D., formerly President of Rich- mond Academy of Medicine and Surgery ; President of American Surgical Association, 1904.
THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH
EDGAR YOUNG MULLINS, D.D., LL.D., President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky.
CONTRIBUTORS.
LEGAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH
WILLIAM REYNOLDS VANCE, M.A.. Ph.D., LL.D., Dean of the Faculty of Law, George Washington University, Washington, D. C.
TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH
WILLIAM GILMER PERRY, Professor of English, Georgia School of Technology, Atlanta, Ga.
INDU8TEIAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH
PATRICK HUES MELL, Ph.D., LL.D., President of Clemson Agricultural College, South Carolina.
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTHERN STATES SEAMAN A. KNAPP, LL.D., Agent in Charge Farmers' CoSperatlve Demonstration Work in the Southern States.
KINDERGARTEN IN THE SOUTH ALICE N. PARKER, Richmond, Va.
GENERAL EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES IN THE SOUTH HENRY SMITH PRITCHETT, Ph.D., LL.D., President of Carnegie Foun- dation for the Advancement of Teaching.
EDUCATIONAL IDEALS AND TENDENCIES
PHILANDER PRIESTLEY CLAXTON, B.A., M.A., Litt.D., Professor of Education, University of Tennessee, President Southern Education Association.
PART IV THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH
DENOMINATIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT ROBERT H. PITT, D.D., The Religious Herald, Richmond, Va.
THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN VIRGINIA
RANDOLPH HARRISON McKIM, D.D., LL.D., Rector of Church of the Epiphany, Washington, D. C.
RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH
ROBERT STRANGE, D.D., Bishop of the Diocese of East Carolina, Wil- mington, N. C.
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN THE SOUTH
THOMAS CARY JOHNSON, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Ecclesiastical His- tory and Polity, Union Theological Seminary of Virginia.
Y. M. C. A. IN RELATION TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOUTH W. D. WEATHERFORD, Ph.D., Student Secretary of the International Committee of Y. M. C. Associations.
SUNDAY SCHOOLS IN THE SOUTH
ISAAC J. VAN NESS, D.D., President of Sunday School Editors' Asso- ciation ; formerly editor of Christian Index.
THE LAYMAN'S MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH
HON. JOSHUA LEVERING, Vice-Presldent of American Baptist Publica- tion Society, Baltimore Md.
THE SOUTHERN PULPIT
WARREN A'. CANDLER, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, Atlanta, Ga.
THE INFLUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM IN THE SOUTH THOMAS CARY JOHNSON, P.D., LL.D., Professor of Ecclesiastical His- tory and Polity, Union Theological Seminary of Virginia, Richmond, Va.
vii
CONTRIBUTORS.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH UPON SOUTHERN LIFE LUCIAN JOHNSTON, M.A., St. Ann's Church, Baltimore, Md.
THE INFLUENCE OF JUDAISM IN THE SOUTH H. G. ENELOW, Rabbi Temple Adath Israel, Louisville, Ky.
PART V SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH
TEMPERANCE REFORM IN THE SOUTH JOHN E. WHITE, D.D., Pastor of Second Baptist Church, Atlanta, Ga.
CHILD LABOR IN THE SOUTH
AUGUST KOHN, Manager Columbia Bureau, The News and Courier; ^* author of The Cotton Mills of South Carolina.
CARE OF DEFECTIVES IN THE SOUTH
WILLIAM P. DREWRY, M.D., Superintendent of Central State Hospital, Petersburg, Va.
FARMERS COOPERATIVE DEMONSTRATION WORK IN THE SOUTH SEAMAN ASAHEL KNAPP, LL.D., Special Agent United States of De- partment of Agriculture, in charge Farmers' Cooperative Demonstra- tion Work.
SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS IN THE SOUTH
^ FREDERICK W. NEVE, D.D., Archdeacon of the Blue Ridge Diocese of Virginia.
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE SOUTH
-x""' LOUISA B. POPPENHEIM, Chairman Council Committee General Federa- tion of Women's Clubs, Charleston, S. C.
^ WOMAN'S PART IN THE EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS OF THE SOUTH MRS. B. B. MUNFORD, President of Richmond Education Association, Richmond, Va.
FRATERNAL ORGANIZATIONS IN THE SOUTH HILL MONTAGUE, Richmond, Va.
SOCIAL TENDENCIES OF THE SOUTH
GUS W. DYER, M.A., B.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Economics and Sociology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn.
PART VI THE AESTHETIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH
PAINTING IN THE SOUTH
HUGER ELLIOTT, Director of Rhode Island School of Design, Provi- dence, R. I.
SCULPTURE IN THE SOUTH MRS. CHARLES C. BOSHER, Richmond, Va.
ARCHITECTURE IN THE SOUTH
J. C. METCALF, M.A., Professor of English, Richmond College, Richmond, Va.
POTTERY IN THE SOUTH MRS. JOHN ROSE FICKLEN, New Orleans, La.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME X
PART I. THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER I.
SOCIAL LIFE OF THE UPPER SOUTH.
Social Life Before War of Secession 1
Influence of Slavery 3
Effect of the Destruction of Slavery 5
Present Social Life of the City 8
Present Social Life of the Country 11
Social Identification With the North 12
Influence of the Negro Population 14
CHAPTER H.
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE LOWER SOUTH.
Territorial Basis for the Lower South 16
An Inherited Social System 18
The Rise of the Lower South 20
The Cotton Kingdom 22
Agriculture and the Negro 25
Intellectual Limitations 28
Slave Labor 29
The Literary Isolation 32
Civil Conflict and the Lower South 34
The New South 36
CHAPTER in.
SOCIAL LIFE OF THE APPALACHIAN REGION.
The Territory 38
The Mountaineers 38
The Work for the Children 41
CHAPTER IV.
EUROPEAN INFLUENCES IN THE SOUTH.
Diverse Elements in Southern Society 44
English Influence in the South 47
French Influence in the South 50
Jefferson's Interest in Foreign Educational Methods 52
German Influences in the South 58
Spanish and French Influences in the South 61
CHAPTER V.
THE ARISTOCRACY OF THE NORTHERN NECK.
The Settlement of the Northern Neck 63
Special Characteristics 66
Homes as Social Centres 68
The Church in the Social Life 71
Industry and Education 72
The Decline of the Old System 74
ix
CONTENTS. CHAPTER VI.
THE OLD REGIME IN VIRGINIA.
Characteristics of the Period 77
Slavery and the Old Regime 87
The Home Circle rfjch
Characteristics of the Men and Women of the Old Regime tJ2 ,
PART II. THE RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH
CHAPTER I.
THE ENGLISH IN THE SOUTH.
I. Colonial 97
Seventeenth Century 97
Eighteenth Century 101
II. National 107
CHAPTER H.
THE FRENCH IN THE SOUTH.
History 118
French Huguenots 119
The Creoles of Louisiana 121
The French in the South 123
CHAPTER III.
THE SPANISH IN THE SOUTH.
Spain's Great Opportunity 126
Discovery of Florida 127
Mengndez Succeeds 127
Destruction of the French Colony 128
East Florida 128
West Florida 121)
Sea Power Lost by Spain 130
War Between English and Spanish Colonies 130
Georgia Founded 131
The Stirring Times of Oglethorpe 131
Florida English, Louisiana Spanish 132
West Florida Spanish Again 132
Minorcan Colonists 132
All Florida Spanish Again 133
Florida Ceded to the United States 133
New Mexico 133
French Claims Lead to Spanish Settlement 134
Missions and Presidios in Texas 134
Spain Mistress of Texas, Louisiana and West Florida 136
Mexico and Florida Lost to Spain 130
Texas Lost to Mexico 137
New Mexico Lost to Mexico 137
CHAPTER IV.
THE GERMANS IN THE SOUTH.
General Statistics < 139
German Settlements in the South 140
CHAPTER V.
THE JEWS IN THE SOUTH.
Jewish Record in Southern History 151
The Jew as a Patriot 165
The Jew as a Citizen 157
CONTENTS. CHAPTER VI.
THE INDIAN IN THE SOUTH.
The Powhatans 160
The Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws and Choctaws 160
The Semlnoles 163
CHAPTER VH.
THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH.
American Negro Origins 166
The Negro Under Slavery 174
The Free Negro Before 1865 179
The Negro Since Emancipation 181
PART III. THE EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH
CHAPTER I.
EDUCATION IN THE SOUTHERN COLONIES.
Conditions and Development 184
Early Interest in Education 186
Principal Factors 187
Philanthropic Spirit 188
Libraries and Colleges 190
Establishment of Other Schools • 192
Rural Schools and Education of Girls 194
CHAPTER II.
EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH BEFORE THE WAR. x
Conditions and Limitations of Southern Educational Efforts.... 196
Institutions in Virginia 198
Maryland 199
North Carolina 199
South Carolina 201
Georgia 202
Tennessee 204
Kentucky 204
Other States 205
Educational and Intellectual Development a Factor in Develop- ment of Nation 206
CHAPTER HI.
EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINCE THE WAR.
I. The Liberal Tendency 209
II. The National Tendency 209
III. The Industrial Tendency 210
The Isolation of the South 211
The Three Tasks of the South 212
Three Educational Advances 215
CHAPTER IV.
HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH.
Early Beginnings 21£
State Movements 22C
Early Religious Efforts 222 1
Later Denominational Foundations 226 .
General Character of Ante-Bellum Colleges 227 /
Renewal of Effort After the War of Secession 228
Inner History of Higher Education Since the War 232
si
CONTENTS. CHAPTER V.
UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES OP THE SOUTH.
Preface 237
The Beginnings of Higher Education 237
State Universities 242
Agricultural and Mechanical Colleges 247
Denominational Colleges and Universities 249
Non-Sectional Colleges and Universities 253
The Higher Education of Women 254
The Higher Education of Negroes 255
Conclusion 255
List of Colleges and Universities in the South 255
CHAPTER VI.
THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN IN THE SOUTHERN
STATES.
Progress Since 1860 260
I. Academic Standards 261
Colleges for Women of High Academic Standards 261
Coeducational Colleges 263
Normal and Industrial Colleges 264
Colleges Having no Fixed Standards 266
II. Endowment 268
CHAPTER VII.
SECONDARY EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH.
Grammar Schools 272
The Academies 274
State Support of High Schools 277
Conclusion 279
CHAPTER VIII.
ELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH.
The Problem of Elementary Education 282
Southern Interest in Education 285
Development Since the War 288
CHAPTER IX. NORMAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH 294-303
CHAPTER X.
MEDICAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH.
Medical Practice in the Colonies 303
Medical Colleges in the South 305
Alabama 305
Arkansas 305
Georgia 305
Kentucky 305
Louisiana 305
Maryland 305
Mississippi 306
Missouri 306
North Carolina 306
South Carolina 306
Tennessee 306
Texas 306
Virginia 306
West Virginia 306
Equipment and Curriculum of the Medical Colleges 306
State Aid to Medical Colleges 308
Rank of Colleges 308
Accomplishments of Southern Medical Colleges 309
xii
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XI.
THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH.
Theological Schools 312
Some Characteristics and Results 318
Endowments 322
CHAPTER XII.
LEGAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTHERN STATES.
William and Mary College 325
Transylvania University 329
The University of Virginia 333
The Cumberland University Law School 336
Public Law at South Carolina College 338
Developments After the War of Secession 340
CHAPTER XIII.
TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH.
The Economic Growth of the South 345
Technical Training Needed for Young Men of the South 347
What Technical Education is 348
Conditions and Needs 350
History of Technical Education in the South 352
CHAPTER XTV. INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH 357-370
CHAPTER XV.
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTHERN STATES.
The Morrill Bill 370
The Hatch Bill 372
Farmers' Institutes 373
Agriculture in Primary and Secondary Schools 373
Work of the Department of Agriculture 374
Farmers' Unions 375
Agricultural Press : Rural Free Delivery 376
Demonstration Methods 377
What the Agricultural College Should Be and Teach 378
CHAPTER XVI.
THE KINDERGARTEN IN THE SOUTH.
The First Kindergarten 381
Kindergarten Associations 382
Importance of the Kindergarten 383
Growth of Kindergartens in South 384
CHAPTER XVII.
GENERAL EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES IN THE SOUTH.
The Peabody Education Fund 387
The John F. Slater Fund 389
The Southern Education Board 390
The General Education Board 392
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching 394
The Russell Sage Foundation 896
The Jeanes Fund for Negro Rural Schools 397
xiii
CONTENTS. CHAPTER XVIII.
EDUCATIONAL IDEALS AND TENDENCIES IN THE SOUTH.
Early Ideals and Tendencies 398
Changes Wrought by the War. . 403
Schools For Negro Education 405
Longer School Terms 412
Public High Schools 412
Better Support of State Colleges and Universities 414
Correlation and Definite Standards 415
Higher Standard of Qualification for Teachers 416
Adaptation of the Education of the Schools to Life 41 7
Negro Education 418
Education of Women 420
Compulsory School Attendance 421
Improvement of Schoolnouses and Grounds 422
Unity and Economy 423
Large Rural Population 424
Two Distinct Races 425
Poverty 425
PART IV.
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH. CHAPTER I.
DENOMINATIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT.
Numerical Strength and Work of the Various Religious Bodies. . . 430
Special Features of the Religious Life of the South 434
Organized Benevolence 435
The Missionary Spirit 436
CHAPTER H.
THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN VIRGINIA'.
The First Church Established at Jamestown 437
Religious Impulse of the Colony 438
The Virginians' Services to New England 440
The Church's Contributions to American Civil Liberty 441
Jamestown the Cradle of Liberty 443
Attitude of Church toward Revolution 444
Contribution of Laity to Civil and Religious Liberty 445
First Statute of Complete Religious Liberty 447
Eminent Members of the Established Church and Their In- fluence 450
CHAPTER in.
RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
The Protestant Episcopal Church 454
The Roman Catholic Church 455
The Presbyterian Church 457
The Baptist Church 458
The Methodist Church 460
The Disciples of Christ 462
The Negro 463
Other Movements 464
CHAPTER IV.
DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN THE SOUTH.
Religious Liberty in the Colonies 466
The Act of Toleration 468
Rev. Francis Makemie and the Presbyterians 468
The Efforts of Rev. Samuel Davies 471
The Baptists of Virginia 474
The Virginia Bill of Rights 475
Support ot Religion by the State 479
xiv
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER V.
THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION IN RELATION TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SOUTH.
History and Work of the Association 482
Contributions of the Young Men's Christian Associations to the Religious Life of the South 48T
CHAPTER VI.
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL IN THE HISTORY OF THE SOUTH.
Early Southern Idea of Sunday School 492
Work of the Sunday School Union 493
Slavery Question a Factor in Religious Life of South 494
The War of Secession a Hindrance to Sunday School Work 496
International Uniform Lesson System Adopted 497
Denominational Work 498
Sunday Schools Among Negroes 499
CHAPTER VH.
THE LAYMEN'S MISSIONARY MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH.
History of the Movement 500
Southern Presbyterians 503
Southern Baptists 505
Southern Metnodlsts 507
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SOUTHERN PULPIT.
Religion in the South 510
Some Distinguished Names of the Southern Pulpit 515
CHAPTER IX.
THE INFLUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM IN THE SOUTH.
The Kinds of Protestantism 527
The Continued Prevalence of Protestantism Compared with that
of Catholicism and Judaism 532
Some Particular Aspects of Southern Protestantism 533
CHAPTER X.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH UPON SOUTH- ERN LIFE.
Past History 538
The Future 546
CHAPTER XI.
THE INFLUENCE OF JUDAISM IN THE SOUTH.
The Southern Jew as a Patriot 552
The Jews and Religious Liberty 555
The Jews in Southern Industrial Development 558
The Jew in the Liberal Professions, the Arts and Sciences 560
The Jew in Southern Philanthropy 565
PART V.
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH. CHAPTER I.
TEMPERANCE REFORM IN THE SOUTH.
Early History of Liquor Traffic in the South 568
Beginning of the Prohibition Movement 569
Some Characteristic Facts of Prohibition 571
Noble Sectionalism 576
The New Issues 579
XV
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER II.
CHILD LABOR IN THE SOUTH.
What Child Labor Means 582
The Number Employed 584
What the Mill Owners Have Done 589
The Laws on Child Labor 592
CHAPTER III.
CARE AND TREATMENT OF THE DEFECTIVES IN THE
SOUTH 597-602
CHAPTER IV.
FARMER'S COOPERATIVE DEMONSTRATION WORK IN THE SOUTHERN STATES.
Many Reforms Needed in Rural Life 603
The Remedy Offered by the Farmer's Cooperative Demonstration
Work 604
Organization of this Special Work 605
Instructions to the Farmer 606
Field Schools 606
Instruction Confined to a Few Essential Subjects 608
Special Features of the Work 608
Effect of the Work on the Farmer 609
Rural Improvement the Natural Result of this Work 611
CHAPTER V
SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
Settlements in the Mountains 616
CHAPTER VI.
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE SOUTH.
Southern Women in the Social and Economic Life 623
Hospital and Charity Work 624
Memorial and Educational Work 629
Work of Southern Club Women 633
Young Women's Christian Association and Other Association
Work 635
The Southern Women . in Literature 636
Conclusion 637
CHAPTER VII.
WOMAN'S PART IN THE EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS OF THE SOUTH.
The Southern Woman's Fitness for Educational Work 638
Various Spheres of Work 640
School Improvement League Work 643
CHAPTER VIII.
FRATERNAL ORGANIZATIONS IN THE SOUTH.
Free Masonry 645
Odd Fellows 648
Red Men 649
Knights of Pythias. 649
The Elks 650
Characteristics and Benefits of Fraternal Organizations 650
CHAPTER IX.
SOCIAL TENDENCIES IN THE SOUTH.
The Industrial Revolution in the South 654
Life in the Rural South 657
svj
CONTENTS PART VI. THE AESTHETIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER I.
PAINTING IN THE SOUTH.
Conditions Not Favorable to Artistic Development 674
Southern-Born Artists and Their Works 679
CHAPTER H.
SCULPTURE IN THE SOUTH.
The Awakening of the Artistic Temperament 682
Progress Since the War 685
Southern Sculptors 686
CHAPTER III.
ARCHITECTURE IN THE SOUTH.
General Character of Architecture in the South 687
Domestic Architecture of English Origin 690
Prevailing Architectural Types in Public Buildings and Churches. 693
The French and Spanish Types 695
CHAPTER IV.
POTTERY IN THE SOUTH.
Historical 698
Modern Clay Industries of the Southern States 701
ILLUSTRATIONS IN VOLUME X.
PAGE
Lady Washington's Eeception PHOTOGRAVURE FRONTISPIECE
University of Virginia, Charlotteville, Va 04
Residence of the Tayloa Family, Mount Airy, V» 68
The Grymes Residence, Brandon, Va 70
Drayton Hall, on the Ashley Hirer 72
Pringle Residence, Charleston 72
Washington at His Home 86
Martha Washington 92
Dolly Madison 94
Marriage of Pocahontas 98
Rigaud, LaTrobe, Grouchy, LaudonniSre and Lallemand 120
New Braunfels, Texas 149
Indian Method of Capturing Wild Horses 162
William and Mary College, Williamsburg, Va 192
College Hall, Vanderbilt University and University of Tennessee.. 232
Wofford College and Washington and Lee University 240
"The Quad," University of Alabama 246
University of Texas 248
University of Mississippi 250
Randolph-Macon College, Ashland, Va 252
Georgia School of Technology 352
Hev. George Whitfield 460
Thomas Campbell 462
First Prayer in Congress 478
Prayer in Stonewall Jackson's Camp 612
Home of the First Catholic Seminary in the United States .... 640
Interior of the Cathedral, Baltimore, Md 640
The Cathedral at Baltimore 646
Cardinal James Gibbons 650
Mississippi State Hospital and First Asylum in America 690
State Hospital for the Insane, Columbia, S. C 698
State Hospital for Colored Insane, Goldsboro, N. C 600
Tuberculosis Cottage, Central State Hospital 602
The Bryce Hospital, Tuscaloosa, Ala 602
Symbolic Figure of "The South" 684
Statue of Jefferson Davia..,. 68ft
PEEFACE TO VOLUME X
HIS is an attempt at self-interpretation upon the part of the South. Self -interpre- tation is, perforce, a delicate undertaking, with certain inherent limitations. Yet owing to singular conditions it seemed proper to elicit the view of Southern people upon Southern issues. The Social Life of the South abounds in romance, tragedy, and pathos, strangely mingled in its cheq- uered course; and its present problems, as well as its dramatic past, enlist the interest and sympa- thies of mankind. Problems are not peculiar to the South. Every country has its own perplexing ques- tions. It has, however, to be remarked that in other places the issue of such difficulties is assured, how- ever great the effort and patience needful to bring them to a conclusion; whereas the problem of the South has not as yet let fall any hint as to its denouement.
The South is not made, but a-making. Social forces here are in ferment. Material development is advancing with rapid strides. Education is dis- playing signal energies in the process of democra- tizing society. Sectionalism is retreating before a revival of loyalty to the Nation. Eeligious agencies are adjusting themselves in a statesman-like way to the demands of the changing order. Women are showing rare insight and initiative in furthering social causes. Political crystallization is breaking up, and industrial leaders are becoming a new power in public affairs. While all these shuttlecock
xix
xx PEEFACE.
changes are taking place, so sound and conserva- tive are the instincts of the people as a whole that the ideals of personal honor and the traditions of loyalty to home and state abide to enrich present forces in Southern life.
This book is not put forth as final. It is designed only as an exponent of the expanding energies and ideals of this section. It is conceived in response to the call of the present, and is vibrant with the forces of the future. If our fathers in 1861 were willing to die for the South, it behooves us, their sons, to live for it.
I wish to thank fpr their kindly cooperation the writers of the following papers. Their courtesy and patience have smoothed many difficulties.
S. C. M.
INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME X
HEBE are several Souths. This is true geographically, historically and socially. In climate, soil and products there are wide dif- ferences between the Upper and Lower South, while the Appalachian region presents a sharp contrast to the Coastal Plain. On the alluvial lands of Mississippi cotton is virtually the sole crop; in portions of Virginia the tobacco plant still engages chief attention; around Charleston, S. C., rice and tea flourish; and in the coves of the mountains of east Tennessee are ensconced a hardy folk who wrest a scant livelihood from the rocky soil, while beside them have recently sprung up mining camps that have tapped unexplored mineral resources. Despite the current impression as to the solidarity of the South, geographical unity is lacking. Nature offers no reason for uniformity in thought and social custom in this section. On the contrary, suggestive variety is presented on every hand by physical conditions which should normally cause cleavages in society, break up hardening customs, and develop local individuality and political inde- pendence. Monotony is by no means the dictate of nature as to the trend of Southern life and ideals. Historically, the same contrasts appear in eco- nomic tendencies, social habits and political thought in the successive periods of the South 's experience, extending over three hundred years. Four eras may be easily distinguished. First was the pre- cotton period, dating from the settlement upon the
xxii INTRODUCTION.
James in 1607 down to the invention of Whitney's cotton gin in 1793. From that hour the mere grow- ing of the cotton plant by the labor of black slaves absorbed almost all energies and laid the basis for the dominance of the Lower South in the racial and political issues of the time, which clustered more and more about the defence of the slave system in contrast to the free and trained labor of the North. The War between the States and Keconstruction con- stitute another well-marked epoch, when the display of heroic energy in battle was followed quickly by prostration and sorrow so deep as to have over- whelmed a less self-reliant and insistent brood of men. The last two decades have ushered in a new age, in which industrialism has made its advent, placing the factory adjacent to the farm, so that both profit by the cooperative union. The present South is surging with all the complex forces of American industrial democracy, while the survivals of the old social order lend interest and perplexity to these engrossing problems.
The changes in the trend of social and political forces in the South answer to these four economic periods, as effects are related to causes. Prior to the ascendency of the cotton plant, many of the leaders, particularly in Virginia, were ardently national and eager for the emancipation of the slaves. When the colonial patriots met for the first time in the Continental Congress of 1774, Patrick Henry, voicing the sentiments of his fellow- Virginians, declared: "The distinctions between New Yorkers, New Englanders and Pennsylvanians are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an Amer- ican." In 1784, Jefferson in his draft of an ordi- nance for the government of the national domain west of the Alleghanies, forbade the existence of
INTRODUCTION. xxiii
slavery after the year 1800, a provision which was defeated, however, by the votes of the Southern states. When Madison set out for the convention of 1787, he carried with him an outline of the con- stitution in which the word "National" was written nineteen times with a capital N. To the same effect was the inspiring example of Washington and Marshall.
The reaction against these progressive views, which is registered in the debates upon the Missouri Compromise, Nullification, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, the Dred Scott Decision, and Secession, coin- cides with the sole supremacy of the cotton plant. The industrial progress of the present day discloses new forces at work in Southern life and a return to the national outlook of the creative period in Amer- ican history. Nationality in the present South is not an innovation, but a revival of pristine loyalty to the flag of our fathers. Thus there are layers of experience in Southern history that show as distinct cleavages as the strata of rocks in the Blue Eidge. Each period in the long and varied course of the South 's career must be studied separately and judged according to the impelling factors in the environment of that particular time. The evolution of the South has been not without abrupt breaks, owing chiefly to radical economic changes and cru- cial racial conditions. It is therefore important for a right understanding of the advancing forces in this section to keep clearly distinct the content of each period and the interplay of its vital forces.
Socially the ante-bellum South resembled a house with three stories. Upon the basement floor stood the Negro slaves. Upon the next floor lived the plain white people, while upon the top story dwelt the aristocratic planters. The peculiarity of the
xxiv INTRODUCTION.
social structure was that no stairway led from the basement to the story above, while the passage from the middle to the highest story was rendered pur- posely difficult and infrequent. Power— educational, social and political — rested with the slave-holding planters, who moulded public opinion at home and figured largely in the affairs of the nation. The mass of plain white people were shut out from opportunity, led dull lives, feeding upon unnourish- ing sentiments, both as to the master class above and the black slaves below. Scarcely anywhere have appeared such contrasts in light and shadow socially as in the old South. The charm of chivalry, the mellowness of classic culture, the exaltation of womanhood, a delicate sense of personal honor, intense love of home, devotion to church, and withal the refinements of feudal society characterized the planters who dwelt side by side with millions of unprivileged white folk, while African slavery formed the background of the scene in which these two sharply contrasted figures of lord and client stood forth to view. Rich in human interest, in- structive in political lore, picturesque in details of life, romantic in the rapid shifts of prestige, sorrow and heroic recovery, the South makes a powerful appeal to the sympathies and thought of every stu- dent who has the ability to detach himself from his environment sufficiently to enter into the chastened experiences of a great people wrestling with strange and adverse conditions.
Thus variety is the prevailing characteristic of the South, when correctly interpreted, whether you consider its physical features, its history, or its social structure. It is for this reason that the plan of the present werk must commend itself to seekers after truth regarding the social life of this section,
INTRODUCTION. xxv
in that specialists have been asked to treat the mani- fold interests of the South in detail. These writers represent a wide distribution geographically as well as in range of historical studies. Hence, it is con- fidently believed, a certain richness in variety as well as accuracy in reproducing the essential factors in Southern life, is to be found in the following pages, the product of the labor of scores of men representing individual and local angles of vision. And yet unity characterizes the South, and it is this fact that has impressed the world. This unity in thought and feeling has become current in such fixed phrases as "the solid South," which implies an economic and social as well as a political solidar- ity. The bonds of union have undoubtedly been strong, bonds sympathetic growing out of common experiences in struggle and suffering. There is a community of feeling among all Southern people, a type of local patriotism that has stood the test of self-sacrifice and war. The South has been welded by sorrow. The fact is that local attach- ments seem to strike deeper rootage in this soil than in some other portions of our country, due perhaps to the warmth of our natures and to the large part that sentiment plays in our lives, as evi- denced by the glow of hero-worship. A Virginian is loyal to his state, but he is scarcely less proud of his native county, the name of which he pro- nounces with reverence.
After all, territorial love is beautiful, and we are fain to admire it in the loyalty of the ancient Israelite to Jerusalem, of the Greek to Hellas, and of the Latin to Rome. It should be no less sig- nificant in the son of Georgia or South Carolina, despite the common rejoicing in the process of
xxvi INTRODUCTION.
fusion incident to American democracy and the assimilation of alien peoples.
We are rightly becoming increasingly responsive to humanity, irrespective of race and region; yet love of native land is a natural sentiment that inspires the noblest energies in kindred virtues, such as fondness for home, duty to the nation, and zeal in religion. It was the existence of this unity in Southern life that prompted the present work, which has almost the same definiteness in subject as a description of Tuscany or a history of Holland.
It must, however, be distinctly borne in mind that this is not a sectional treatment. Localism is not at variance with nationalism, any more than the indi- viduality of the child mars the sympathy of the family as a whole. American life is continental, after the fashion of the vast extent of domain. Monotony in art, literature and social custom may result from the dead stretches in geography, the general resemblance in habits, and the republican uniformity in institutions. We should welcome localism, as Josiah Boyce pleads, while at the same time we frown upon sectionalism as at war with the oneness of national life. Local self-government is the rich heritage of Teutonic peoples ; and modern democracy, which makes for cosmopolitanism by reason of its genius for human brotherhood and universal education, will do well to conserve this original germ of freedom. The South has individu- ality as a region of well-defined economic interests and in the distinctive character of its people; and this fact is to be regarded as a national asset, just as the entrancing story of Scotland forms an inte- gral part of Britain's history, or the finely-marked provincialism of New England has been a creative factor in the strenuous impulses and glowing ideals
IXTBODUCTION.
of America. Southern issues are, therefore, viewed in the light of national destiny. This book has been conceived in a national spirit.
The South is to-day a laboratory for the study of sociological forces. The vital interest attaching to such problems, which are here presented in all their complexity, would alone necessitate and justify a work of this kind. The South is tugging at the most serious task in Christendom in trying to reconcile the interests of two races diverse in color and char- acter, living upon the same soil, and having held strangely different relations to one another in the dramatic periods of their conjoined experiences. Such racial adjustment in society, industry and politics the South is endeavoring to achieve through the agency of the school. This region offers, conse- quently, the vastest experiment in education that has perhaps ever been attempted. The solution of the South 's problem is primarily one of spirit. Can we energize reason and conscience to do their per- fect work? Spirit as a sovereign genius presides over all the forces operative in this world-engaging social process that seeks "a more excellent way" of harmonizing the interests of different races according to the rule of mutual helpfulness. This issue is not the least of the reasons for believing that a volume on the " Social Life of the South in the Building of the Nation" has value both to this and other lands, since the right relation of races is a major task of the present world.
S. C. M.
PART I.
THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER I. SOCIAL LIFE OF THE UPPER SOUTH.
Social Life Before War of Secession.
!)NE of the sharpest contrasts in the social •history of the United States is presented in the difference between the social life of the Upper South previous to the War of Secession and its social life since. Before 1860 the most characteristic society of the region between the Patapsco and the Yadkin was in the rural districts. Love of the country and a pas- sion for rural pursuits and pastimes had been inher- ited along with other traits of the English blood; and these feelings and tastes had grown rather than weakened with the progress of time. The planta- tion was the immemorial seat of the family affec- tions and the permanent centre of the family inter- ests. All that promoted the refinement and culture of the people, all that exercised the most powerful influence in moulding their social spirit, all that sustained and advanced their economic welfare, sprang almost exclusively out of the rural commu- nities; the leaders and exemplars of the social life
1
2 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
of the Upper South, with hardly an exception, resided there ; and so with the principal representa- tives of the great callings — law, medicine and the church.
There were few towns; still fewer cities. The towns that did exist were simply petty markets for the staples of the surrounding counties, while the cities were mere distributing centres for agricultural and household manufactured supplies. North Caro- lina possessed no city in the modern sense at all; Virginia had in Eichmond a community of high social and intellectual culture, but one which exer- cised little influence on the social life of the state; and this was also true of Baltimore in its relation with the social life of southern Maryland, at least.
There was to all intents no disposition to desert the country for the towns ; on the contrary, so soon as a merchant or tradesman accumulated a fortune in a city, his first desire was to purchase a landed estate and slaves and to set himself up in a rural home. The one pursuit which all preferred was agriculture. In most parts of the Upper South manufactures had no existence beyond the products of the plantation loom, smithy, and saddler's shop. The population of that region, from the highest to the lowest rung of the ladder, was averse to urban life and urban occupations. Every social gradation was represented in the ranks of that population, from the educated planter of ancient family and large fortune, to the indigent and illiterate denizen of the pine barrens and stony ridges. Social demar- cations were distinctly drawn without generating superciliousness or pretention on one side, or grudge or envy on the other. The landowner, whose estate spread over an area of thousands of acres, who counted the roll of his slaves by the hundreds, and the ramifications of whose kinships by blood or mar-
THE UPPER SOUTH. 3
riage ran far and wide through his native state, stood at the head of his community's social life; next to him came the landowner of narrower pos- sessions and less conspicuous social connections ; and at a still greater interval stood the obscure but sturdy yeoman, who, too poor to own slaves, had to till his thin soil with his own hands. From the first two sections were recruited the principal statesmen, lawyers, educators and clergymen of the Upper South. However exhausted its fertility here and there, that region nevertheless possessed, in every one of its rural communities, a political, profes- sional, or social leader enjoying justly the respect of all for character and attainments alike.
Influence of Slavery.
The principal characteristics of this rural society had come down from the colonial age ; the tendencies of modern thought as reflected in current books and newspapers, the more frequent communication with the vast outside world made possible by the railway and telegraph, had planted no seed of innovation in the soil of that society. That it was as conservative in 1860 as it had been in 1760, was due to the firm- ness of the foundations on which the institution of slavery rested, and to the far-spreading influence which that institution, both directly and indirectly, exercised. Which were the most powerful of these influences ? First, the slave system, by discouraging all immigration from the North and from Europe, raised a barrier against the incoming of foreign people, who, by their early education and associa- tions, would have been disposed to undermine the existing social and economic order. The world at large had gradually acquired an ineradicable and irrepressible antipathy to that order; and this feel- ing had heen communicated to the persons who
4 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
would have settled in the South had its soil been dedicated, like that of the West, to freedom. The presence of slavery, by putting a damper on the erection of new towns and impeding the growth of old, fostered agriculture while it blighted manufac- tures. For agriculture, there was an ample supply of laborers in the slaves — there was no room for the white immigrants there whatever — and as there were few manufactures, since there were few cities and towns, the room for employment in the factories was too narrow to stimulate the introduction of Northern or European workingmen to fill it. Sec- ondly, slavery tended to disperse the population of the Upper South over a broader area than the number of its inhabitants really justified, the reason of which lay in the rapid increase in the body of slaves ; unless the landowner had possessed a great extent of ground, he would have had no margin of soil for the hands of these surplus laborers to till. His disposition, under the influence of this economic stress, as well as of the pride which the enjoyment of such property pampered, was, by repeated pur- chases, to push out the boundaries of his estate. The result of the greater social independence which fol- lowed was to confirm his loyalty to his inherited points of view, and to further strengthen his pas- sionate desire to preserve the existing social system precisely as it stood.
Finally, slavery, by spreading out the population more thinly, as well as by sustaining the prevailing feeling of caste, tended to weaken whatever senti- ment might have existed favorable to popular edu- cation. For this reason, one of the principal means which our time offers of modifying public opinion failed to. come into play in any part of the Upper South, except possibly in North Carolina, where the spirit of the people was always more democratic
THE UPPER SOUTH. 5
than in the communities lying towards the North or South.
Effect of the Destruction of Slavery.
The extinction of slavery in the consuming fur- nace of war subverted the social system of the Upper South by destroying the economical founda- tion on which it rested, and from which it derived its peculiar character. The economic influences which emancipated negro labor set at work were almost exactly the reverse of those which had sprung from unemancipated ; the central fact of the new order is that the drift towards the concentration of the greater proportion of the area of soil in the hands of a comparatively few proprietors, so con- spicuous before 1860 throughout the Upper South, has been substituted by a drift toward subdivision among an ever augmenting host of small land- owners. Now, this tendency toward subdivision arose within a few years after the end of hostilities. Naturally, at first, the large proprietors were not disposed to sell, owing to inherited tastes and the habits of a lifetime; and this disinclination was encouraged by the absence of any very favorable opportunity of investing elsewhere, for the towns and cities were then as prostrate as the rural dis- tricts. But debt, often descending from the period before the war, compelled many owners of large estates to part with their lands just as soon as pur- chasers offered. The disorganization of labor, and the necessity of paying wages, quickly brought many proprietors into debt who had not been in debt before.
The greatest impetus to subdivision, however, was given by their heirs. In most instances, when a large landowner died, his estate was sold by his sons. These sons, either during his lifetime had settled in
6 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
some town or city, or, at his death, had decided that a continued residence in the country was too harass- ing from a domestic point of view, or too unprofit- able from a business, or too dull and lonely from a social, to justify the retention of the paternal estate. The emigration of the younger members of families occupying the most conspicuous social position in the rural communities of the Upper South was almost universal. Many, it is true, stopped perma- nently in the nearest country town, but a very respectable number settled in the principal cities of their native state, while others removed as far afield as the West and North. Here and there, the repre- sentatives of some wealthy and influential family of slavery times succeeded his father in the ancestral home, but where one thus remained, a hundred sought their fortunes in town, and where one ancient residence still echoed to the voices of the large slave- holder's descendants, a dozen were inhabited by persons who would have made no pretense to even a middle station in society had they lived before the war. In too many instances the mansion, in spite of its haunting memories of a distinguished family his- tory, had been converted into a barn, or from neglect sunk into a state of irredeemable ruin.
It was due largely to the influence of this class of emigrants — the young men of the highest social posi- tion— that the villages, towns, and cities of the Up- per South soon began to grow at a rate never before observed in their annals. Hither came all those members of this class who were anxious to enjoy the same social opportunities which their fathers had enjoyed in the country before the abolition of slav- ery ; hither, too, came all who were eager to win suc- cess in business or the professions, and as they pros- pered, they became increasingly immersed in their new life, and more and more alienated from the old.
THE UPPEK SOUTH. 7
The accumulations which, before the war, they would have invested in land and negroes, they now invested in stocks, bonds, and city tenements, or in the dif- ferent branches of trade, or of manufactures.
The impetus thus given to the expansion of the towns was accelerated by the construction of new railroads, and by the additions of Northern capital attracted by the opportunities offered for in- vestment in a comparatively undeveloped territory. While North Carolina still possesses not a single large city, its map is dotted with old towns whose prosperity has been advanced by these combined in- fluences, and with new, which have been created alto- gether by these influences. In Virginia, the same fact is observed — the cities have grown, towns have become cities, and villages towns. Most of the sta- tions along the several lines of railway are now small trading or manufacturing centres.
While the families which gave the country life of the Upper South under the old system so much dis- tinction were deserting their ancestral homes and neighborhoods, the men and women who belonged to a lower position in society remained citizens of the communities in which their people before them had resided perhaps for generations. Formerly, when a large proprietor was seeking to push out the bound- aries of his estate, he purchased the little home- steads of the yeomen who were seated about him. These yeomen then, in most cases, emigrated either to the West or to the Southwest. Throughout the Upper South one can often still trace in the thick woods the almost obliterated marks of where these yeomen formerly lived ; the scattered stones of the fallen chimney, the depression in the earth where the foundation for the cabin had been dug, the sink in- dicating the site of an ancient grave — such are a few memorials of the past system. But the whirligig of
8 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
time has brought in a radical change. Under the present regime, it is not the large proprietor who is buying the estates of the yeomen, but the yeomen who are buying the estate of the large proprietor ; it is his ancestral home, not the yeoman's, which is fall- ing to decay and ruin. Practically there is now no emigration of small landowners from the Upper South simply because the opportunities for improv- ing their fortunes by acquiring the most fertile soil are no longer closed to them by the barriers former- ly raised by the presence of a wealthier class.
If any one whose recollections go back to the per- iod of slavery wishes to see how far the social revolu- tion in the Upper South has reached, let him mingle with the people in the rural churches or at the county seats; let him attend such a popular occasion as a political barbecue or a public meeting for the pro- motion of some local interest. Not often will fall on his ear there names famous in the social or political past of that region of country; for the bearers of these names he must inquire among the congrega- tions of the city and town churches, in the halls of the city clubs, or in the lecture rooms of colleges and schools.
Present Social Life of the City.
Under the regime of slavery, the social life of the country dominated the social life of the town. It is now the reverse — the social life of the town com- pletely overshadows the social life of the country. Under the new system, the only substitute for the refined and cultivated society which formerly exist- ed in all the older communities of the Upper South is to be observed in the centres of urban population. But the flavor of that old social life has not been transmitted to the new because of the influences of an altered environment. The simplicity, heartiness,
THE UPPER SOUTH. 9
and liberality of the social spirit of those times, (when hospitality, made easy by troops of carefully trained slaves, and an inexhaustible profusion of supplies, was looked upon as a sacred duty, and when family ties were recognized to a remote degree of consanguinity) — has been greatly diminished by constant intercourse with the world at large, by a revolution in ideas and pursuits, and by the strain of a more strenuous existence.
There was in that old society practically no osten- tation, no pretension, no imitation of alien habits and customs. It had a highly developed character of its own, which was only rendered possible by the comparative isolation of the country life of that day. Social rules, standards, and points of view inherited from a remote period, customs descending from a distant ancestry, underwent little change because the life remained unruffled by the social currents of Europe and the North. The present social life of the Upper South is far more obedient to the dictates of the world at large ; far more sensitive to the altering fashions — intellectual and moral — of that world; far more inclined to be docile, ductile, responsive, and imitative. It follows that the highest social life of that region — as represented in its cities today — is more pretentious, more ostentatious.
This is also because the social competition is now more acute. During the existence of slavery, new families were not constantly rising to prominence, since the chance of improving private fortunes was then narrow in the country owing to the absence of trade and commerce. Agriculture, which the bulk of the people followed, failed to offer any quick means of accumulating a great estate. In the modern cities of the Upper South, on the other hand, extraordi- nary capacity for business finds in the bank, count- ing room, and factory, a certain field in which to
10 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
gather up money ; and in a commercial community, it is the possessor of this capacity who is most apt to be held up to the admiration of all as the man who has won the highest success in life. The founders of large fortunes and their immediate families are nat- urally socially ambitious, and this disposition has its first expression in more or less display ; a powerful tone is thus set by a class which was practically un- known in the rural society of the Upper South in for- mer times. But while the members of this class have diminished the simplicity, and, perhaps, the re- finement, of the present highest social life of that region, the spirit which they have spread abroad has, in other ways, made that social life more varied, more alert, and much less provincial. Society has become a race open to all aspirants who combine so- cial energy and ambition with the necessary fortune. There are no barriers to such qualities backed by such advantages. Ancestry counts for much less than formerly unless the person claiming a distin- guished descent can show other substantial creden- tials to consideration.
Under the past regime, as we have already pointed out, when the resident of the city succeeded in accu- mulating a fortune, he was always inclined to invest the greater part of it in a country estate and slaves ; and on retiring from trade, he withdrew permanent- ly to this new home. Under the present regime, should a rural estate be purchased by a wealthy banker, merchant or manufacturer, it would be only for use and enjoyment during the prevalence of the heated season. It is either for temporary diversion only, or for the preservation of his family's health during the most trying months of the year. The country is no longer recruited from the city except during this very brief period.
THE UPPER SOUTH. 11
Present Social Life of the Country.
It is not strange that it should not be. The social life of the rural districts throughout the year is sim- ply the social life of the small landowners. As a rule, the yeomen cultivate their ground with their own hands ; they have no assistance either in their fields, or in their homes, beyond what is furnished by the members of their own families, and, in consequence, they have to pay out little money except for the few manufactured supplies which they need. How stead- ily they are accumulating is proven, not only by the rapid subdivision of lands now in progress, but also by the increase in the number of local banks ; there is not a small town, hardly a village, in the Upper South, which does not contain one or more institu- tions of this kind supported by the deposits of the farmers and planters in the surrounding country. As this rural population acquires property, they are learning to value more the advantages which the possession of means assures — there is a steady im- provement in the character of their homes, of their vehicles, and of their teams.
They have also a growing sense of the importance of education. The public school system has stimu- lated their desire for knowledge — one of the most significant and promising aspects of the condition of the rural communities to-day is the number of news- papers and periodicals to which the people subscribe, a disposition strongly encouraged by the conveni- ence of the rural free delivery. The remarkable in- crease in the attendance of students in the colleges and higher schools of the Upper South is largely due to this advance in the thrift of the small landowners, and to their more ardent appreciation of the value of education. Before the war, this class of Southern citizens derived their only political education, as a
12 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
rule, from speakers on the hustings. The political knowledge they now have has been acquired more frequently by reading newspapers than by listening to public orators, however well informed.
With the diversification of agriculture, the small landowners are becoming better versed in the most productive methods of farming; and their progress in this respect is further hastened by the instruc- tions of farmers' institutes, by the practical work of the agricultural colleges and experiment stations, and by the activity of every kind of association or- ganized for protecting and fostering their interests. Their social condition is rising with the improvement in their pecuniary condition. There is now far less of the benumbing and narrowing personal isolation of former times, owing to the growth of population and the expanding facilities for traveling. The small towns are now so numerous that every landowner has the opportunity of breaking the monotonous reg- ularity of his life by frequent visits to a larger com- munity than that represented in his own rural neigh- borhood. A general social equality prevails through- out the country districts, and the people there are more harmonious, more homogeneous, because there are no substantial differences in their social station ; the differences that do exist are those created by in- dividual character ; there are practically none due to mere birth, and few due to diversities of fortune.
Social Identification With the North.
From this brief account it will be seen that the social life of the Upper South now rests upon the same general foundation as the social life of the Northern and Western states; it is developing unmistakably along the same well defined lines of character. As yet there are not in that region the
THE UPPER SOUTH. 13
same number of large cities as those states can show; nor the same number of towns and villages; nor as yet does its rural population offer the same degree of diversity ; but the nuclei of the same social conditions, both in town and country, exist every- where from one end of the Upper South to the other. So far, this tendency towards absolute identification with the social life of the North has been checked by the fact that the population is still perfectly homogeneous. The proportion of foreign-born citi- zens in the urban centers is very small ; while the proportion in the rural districts is smaller still. In neither is it of any social importance as yet. Prac- tically the entire population is sprung from the orig- inal settlers, and this population has those virtues of conservatism and stability which arise from a people's long association with the same soil. But it is only a question of time when the waves of immi- gration will be rolling more and more towards the states of the Upper South. This is already fore- shadowed in their expanding prosperity. Naturally, the greater number of the newcomers will find homes in the cities, for there the new conditions are bring- ing about an extraordinary diversity of production, which must widen the opportunities for employ- ment and increase the demand for labor. Gradually the cheap lands, the mild climate, the enlarged facil- ities for transportation, and the improvements of the public school system, will draw to the rural dis- tricts of this region an ever augmenting number of aliens ; under the influence of whose accession to the ranks of the present homogeneous urban and rural population, the tendency towards identification with the social life of the North will be very much strengthened, until in the end it will be difficult to discover any real difference between the two, either from a social or an economic point of view.
14 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
Influence of the Negro Population.
How far will the presence of the black population modify the social development of the Upper South? There are two facts that foreshadow a decline in such influence as the negroes are now exercising over that development — first, they are not increasing as rapidly proportionately as the whites ; and secondly, both as domestic servants and as field laborers, they are, in the mass, growing more inefficient and more untrustworthy. One of the principal reasons why they are falling relatively so much behind the white population, numerically, is that so many are emi- grating to the Northern and Western communities — they do this because they are restless by nature; because they obtain there higher wages ; and because there they are assured of certain social and political advantages which they can never acquire in the Southern states. The tendency towards emigration is sure to increase in the future until, in the Upper South at least, the growth of the black population will gradually come to a standstill. This was sub- stantially so in Virginia between 1890 and 1900, when the addition to that population was only twen- ty-five thousand. The next census will reveal an even greater falling off. But the spirit of emigra- tion now animating the negroes is not confined to a disposition to move northward and westward — there is a steady drift from the rural districts to the cities and towns of the Upper South itself.
The negro is not sharing equally in the subdivision of the soil — not only because the members of the new generation are less industrious, less skilful, and less persistent than were the members of the previ- ous one, but the most intelligent and enterprising individuals seek the towns in pursuit of more profit- able employment and a more varied society. Arguing from the influences now at work, it is within the
THE UPPER SOUTH. 15
range of probability that the black population of the cities, towns, and villages of the Upper South will, in time, greatly outnumber that of the rural dis- tricts. But the forces destructive of the race are much more actively in operation in the urban centers than in the country; the hygienic conditions there are far less favorable to their increase. Competi- tion in domestic service, and in the rough tasks of the streets, already beginning, will only grow fiercer as time advances. The survival of the negroes in large numbers will, in the Upper South, as else- where, ultimately depend upon the question whether they have the moral qualities to hold their own as servants and laborers against the relentless rivalry of white competitors, who are augmenting not only through the birth rate in each community, but also by additions through emigration from other parts of the United States and from Europe.
Already the disposition of the negroes of the Upper South is to remain closely within their own social sphere — they have their separate schools, separate churches, and separate organizations of other kinds. They come in contact with the whites only in the capacity of servants and laborers. There are no points of real social contact. The danger of amalgamation is less today than it was forty years ago, when the intimacy encouraged by slavery had not passed away with the generation of either color born under that institution. Even at this early stage of observation all indications foreshadow a gradual diminution in the impression which the African race is making on the social life of the white inhabitants of the Upper South. That social life is being remoulded by influences which would have sprung up had not a single negro been left in that entire region after the fall of the Confederacy ; and these influences, in working out their ultimate effects, are
16 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
too powerful to be seriously retarded by the pres- ence of the blacks, steadily declining, as they are doing, in social and economic importance through the force of their own unfortunate qualities.
PHILIP ALEXANDER BRUCE,
Author of The Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century.
CHAPTER II. THE SOCIAL LIFE IN THE LOWER SOUTH.
Territorial Basis for the Lower South.
T a cursory glance, one might say that there was no appreciable difference between the social life of the Upper and Lower South. Yet, a marshaling of facts and a proper estimate of the spirit of things will undoubtedly show that those tendencies toward democratization which the South has manifested since the reconstruc- tion period — or more specifically since 1870 — were first manifest in the Lower South — and, strange to say — before the war.
Throughout the colonial years, while it is a fact that territorial boundaries were drawn, they were well nigh limitless in their western sweep, stopped only by conflict with other nationalities. Virginia was practically the South, while the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida only vaguely hinted at the future outlines of what we now term the Lower South.
The territorial basis for this section has been subject to diverse foreign influences, which have left
THE LOWER SOUTH. 17
traces of their presence in the nomenclature of streets and cities, in the landmarks of thoroughfare and mansion, in the retention of family name though the flavor be gone therefrom, and, in a few instances, —most notably the Creole traditions of New Orleans — in a distinct civilization, isolated in tem- perament and national feeling, even as the Spaniard was isolated in California, when the Gringo first put in an appearance.
We may block off the territory of the Lower South, in the historical period of exploration, by placing the French in South Carolina, in Florida, in Texas, in Mississippi, and above all in Louisiana; by noting the defined marks left by the Spanish in Florida; and by crediting the English with the remaining colonization, even to a dominant hand in the establishment of South Carolina. The traditions of New Orleans and Mobile and Charleston, and those of St. Augustine, attest a certain foreign influ- ence, which, together with the climate, and the pecu- liar exactions of an enforced civilization, might, in a way, account for what is identified as Southern temperament.
The carving out of the Lower South is concerned with the acquirement of the Louisiana territory at a time when every effort was being made to establish a French empire on American soil ; it has to do with the disputes over the Florida boundaries, which, when once settled, resulted in the relinquishing of a considerable part of the territorial claims of Georgia and Carolina in order to make way for future South- ern states.
In other words, the Lower South, territorially, was in process of transformation all the while other sections were becoming better established and their resources better defined.
Vol. 10—2
18 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH. An Inherited Social System.
Socially, the Lower South inherited most of its customs and institutions from Virginia, which, be- sides being the mother of Presidents, was likewise the mother of states. Out of her strength came the strength of the Middle West; from the unwisdom, however much we bear in mind the undoubted charm, of her aristocratic class, which peopled the tidewater region, came the necessity for migration — into North Carolina, into the mountains, and thence, through varied channels, into the Lower South. And those who thus went were not of the middle class, such as peopled New England ; they were not of the thrifty class, but had inherited much of the wasteful attitude toward the soil which the wealthier class were showing, and which had pushed them, the poorer rank, into sand and barren, and had prompted them to exert their pioneer spirit, which was their Anglo-Saxon inheritance.
Land hunger, therefore, was one of the prime forces that carried streams of English emigrants over the Appalachian range, through Kentucky, thence into the Mississippi Valley, and down into Texas. The richness of the natural soil invited extravagance on a large scale, and, whereas the small farmer of the North learned, through neces- sity, to conserve the strength of his land by alter- nating crops, the plantation of the South knew prac- tically but one product, keeping down the cultivation of other resources to the level of bare demand.
These emigrant classes brought with them vir- tually the same social system, with this in their favor, that, whereas the relative grades of society were primarily unchangeable, the highest of them was one step nearer the soil and one degree less inclined to scout the suggestion that men of ability
THE LOWER SOUTH. 19
might rise from the ranks to represent them in the struggle that lay ahead.
A new adjustment was thus to be effected; the statesman of the past, as represented by Washing- ton, and by Jefferson who distinctly disapproved of slavery, was the constructive genius intent upon founding a nation; the statesman now to arise was one whose view extended hardly further than the agricultural system which was attached to him when he reached the Black Belt, which was rapidly increased by the easy response of nature, and which was still further strengthened by the facility of the cotton gin, invented while Eli Whitney was visiting Savannah.
Physical advantages, therefore, encouraged even larger holdings than were prevalent in Virginia, which meant that the Black Belt, the rich soil, was concentrated in fewer hands than marked a similar class in the Upper South, and encouraged, even more than in Virginia, the wide dispersion of population. The small farmer took up the less fertile, the sandier region, while the poor white was pushed into the pine barrens.
Protestantism in Virginia meant the Episcopal Church; but in the Lower South, while religious life was just as conservative, it was more largely made up of Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians. In every direction, the Southern community being conservative, there was small room for the entrance of any trace of Universalism, Unitarianism, or of free thought, which, appearing in New England, did quite as much, if not more, than abolitionism, to awaken consciences to the moral significance of slavery.
From 1820 until the war the history of the United States not only has to do with the diversity of inter-
20 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
ests which marked North and South, but also with the expansion of territory, and the admission of states, which threatened each time to upset what- ever limited equilibrium might exist between two sections, one of which was donainantly industrial, and the other of which was pledged, through time and circumstances, to agriculture. The Battle of New Orleans, fought behind a bulwark of cotton, the Creek War in Alabama, the seizure of West Florida by a governor of the territory of Louisiana, the annexation of Texas, which brought the United States into conflict with Mexico, and which trained Southern men under Taylor and Scott — men who were later to be the leaders of the Confederate armies — the carving out of the territorial extent of the Lower South involved all this.
The Southern people were content to have terri- torial expansion just as long as it strengthened their economic system; they even expressed a desire for Cuba. The development of sectionalism was bound to arise where, as in the South, the limitation of agriculture to virtually one product — cotton — de- manded protection. This was the cause of the rise of the Lower South; the people had to have a domi- nant force in the Senate at Washington; otherwise their system would be in jeopardy.
The Rise of the Lower South.
The history of the Lower South until the war was, therefore, one entirely centered in the protection of its social system, in which the question of slavery was at first only one of the important details among many others. The character of the people was moulded according to the demands and privileges of their patriarchal life; their political and economic outlook was governed by a desire to overcome any
THE LOWER SOUTH. 21
restriction that might affect their institution. The Southerner was sensitive to criticism because he found himself pledged to a system which required him to be always on the defensive.
The Lower South rose on the tide of sectional dis- crimination, and, curiously enough, this separation began during a period known as the "Era of Good Feeling." The desire for internal improvements, and the opposition of the South to such; the impo- sition of tariffs and the protests of Southern states- men that the burden of taxation fell heaviest upon their section, with the least benefit accruing there- from; the question of the further territorial exten- sion of slavery — these were the points that irri- tated the Southern people and made them seek the ascendency in Washington.
The sparseness of population in the South encour- aged an isolation that made for aloofness of methods on one hand, and for a characteristic individualism on the other. The patriarchal life developed a cer- tain charm of manner, a certain prodigal hospitality that made a Southern home distinctive. When the Southern planter resorted to Charleston or to New Orleans for his annual combination of business and pleasure, he managed to stock himself with all the metropolitan enjoyment that the time and place could afford. That was his sole contact with the cosmopolitan world. New England life concentrated around the meeting house and the town hall; even small villages were not so far distant from larger communities that they felt themselves cut aloof from the world. But the Southern planter, aristocratic in his feelings rather than so in his purse, would calculate to meet his neighbor only when their cross roads met. Here perhaps might be erected a church, not so many miles away from the farm houses that
22 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
the families could not pilgrimage to service on Sundays.
The county town was characteristic of the Lower South, and the oratory for which the Southerner was famous found an outlet during court week. The aristocracy or gentry were marked by social preju- dices which were further increased by the fact that they were the ruling class. The yeomanry, who felt themselves to a degree discriminated against by those above them, had developed within them a pride which discouraged any desire to labor, for fear that they might, more often than was good for their social position, be identified with the slaves. The pride of the average Southerner was one reason for the Southerner's indolence. When, finally, he became aware that agriculture alone would never make the South retain her balance of power in the government, he tried to engraft upon one form of life the instruments of another; at first suspicious of all improvements, and holding fast to the old ways, he found himself suddenly aware of the neces- sity for that which would encourage greater efficiency in work. But he found that efficiency by the use of machinery meant a more skilled laboring class, and slavery was against a high-wage standard.
The Cotton Kingdom
Cotton was king in the Lower South ; the market- place meant the gathering of cotton wagons, and the bulwarks of cotton bales around the public square ready for transportation. The white boll far sur- passed sugar and tobacco in its importance ; all other commodities steadily declined, though they were far from ignored. The soil was valued, not for its future possibilities, but for its immediate results. As one authority said: "Soil that would yield 1,800
THE LOWER SOUTH. 23
pounds of cotton to each hand was preferable to that yielding only 1,200 pounds." The planter did not stop to think that he might alternate crops; whatever land on his plantation he found not re- sponsive to the one product, he left uncultivated, not reckoning that it need not lie fallow in other directions.
But, in spite of these defects, which were not so much defects in the people as in the system, South- erners realized their limitations, although they refused to allow outsiders to tell them wherein those limitations lay. The wastefulness of plantation life did not help in any way to encourage the thriftiness of the small farmer.
England and the North and the Northwest looked to the South for raw material upon which their manufactures depended. The South looked to Eng- land as much as to the North for her imports. The Yankee spirit was the commercial spirit, regarded by the Southerner as a sort of vulgarity with which he, as a gentleman, could not identify himself. The relation was very much as it exists to-day between the English gentry and their middle class trades people. Everything pointed to the discouragement of an industrial system; it required skilled labor, and slavery could not support that idea ; it demanded the patronage of a very immediate public, and Southern wants were not so urgent; it finally depended upon capital being drawn to it, and money was mostly invested in the North.
Southern industrial activity, however, began in the direction of cotton factories in Georgia as early as 1811. When the war came and the Southerners were thrown upon their own resources, physical want was not due to the fact that the South was utterly devoid of any means of manufacturing neces-
24 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
sities for the Confederate armies, but that there were not sufficient means to turn out an adequate supply for the large demand that needed immediate atten- tion. Notwithstanding, the foundations of the vig- orous industrial activity which now marks the Lower South began more than a decade before the final struggle of the Old Regime. Around the cotton-mill of Prattsville was gathered a nucleus for a settle- ment, with its wooden churches and its school houses. Many were the centres of like character. The iron of Alabama and Tennessee was a profitable industry, and later became the chief reason for the increase of certain cities, such as Birmingham, in population and in material prosperity. Southern initiative pre- ceded Northern capital.
Indeed, were one to consider carefully the state of Alabama, for example, the territorial division could easily indicate three distinct changes that typify life in the Lower South. These divisions are represented by Mobile, as still retaining some of the old foreign flavor; by Montgomery, as breaking gradually from a traditional life, and as being keenly alive to the progressive movement ; and by Birming- ham, a product of the New South — as influenced by Northern capital.
In regard to trade and commerce, the Lower South was anxious to rise above the exactions of an agri- cultural system. She could boast of her ports at New Orleans, Charleston and Savannah, but not for long, inasmuch as the freer exigencies of trade in New York and Boston, and even Baltimore, together with the financial conditions which made it easier for the North to obtain notes of credit, soon took away from the prestige of Southern centres.
Notwithstanding, the Southern politician and the Southern planter realized the necessity for those
THE LOWER SOUTH. 25
means which would facilitate their trade and com- merce, inasmuch as population every year was spreading out over a wider area. It was in the South that the railroad first received its greatest impetus, and for two decades after 1830, railroad conventions were held, systems were planned, and the states, even the cities and individuals, pledged capital for their furtherance. This was internal improvement of a different character from that offered by a cen- tralized government; it was strictly in accordance with what was later to be called " states rights." Atlanta grew out of and flourished upon this move- ment.
But, despite the fact that in the South the tele- graph was introduced at an early date, and the move was made to communicate directly with foreign markets from Southern ports, the balance of trade was found in the North. Not only was the South 's credit hampered in many directions; circumstances also led to governmental appropriations being dis- tributed in larger quantities through the North ; and it is not so much the appropriation which is a ben- efit, as the means behind this, to increase the value of the appropriation after it is given. The South did not have the means.
Agriculture and the Negro.
In every direction, therefore, industrially and commercially, agriculture and the negro sat heavily upon the progress of the South. They affected the educational problem; they permeated the literature which was produced; they entered the very fibre of Southern life. Yet underneath that which was changing slowly but surely through a process of individual initiative on the part of the South her- self— when abolitionism fanned the warmth into a
26 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
flame — lay all the elements of democratization which are now so evident throughout the whole of the Lower South.
In a certain sense, the social prejudice noted by William Gilmore Simms, when he first tried to enter Charleston circles, is one distinctive phase of early life in the Lower South; in another sense, South Carolina is an extreme case and not representative of the whole South. For example, the nullification policy, which changed Calhoun from a Union believer into an advocate of sectional legislation, while enthusiastically proclaimed in South Carolina, was not sanctioned by the rest of the Lower South. The aristocracy, with an education largely Euro- pean, with a taste predominantly classical, and a style of Addisonian expression, was pledged to an old world standard. Here Simms was confronted by what, unfortunately, was the chief characteristic of all Southern ante-bellum life, a life which, as Pro- fessor Trent remarks, "choked all thought and investigation that did not tend to conserve existing institutions and opinions, a life that rendered origi- nality scarcely possible except under the guise of eccentricity. ' '
Educational progress throughout the South was largely influenced by the social life. At first the son was sent away for his college education, either abroad or to the North ; yet the history of Southern education shows that higher instruction received first attention. Denominational institutions were also widely established, and this fact probably did much to retard any movement toward the democrati- zation of learning, though it did much to help the South.
Nevertheless, we must not lose sight of the fact that the states of the Lower South have never been
THE LOWER SOUTH. 27
callous to the educational needs of their people. Some critics are prone to-day to accentuate the out- side support received by the South in her fight against illiteracy, without fully realizing the sacri- fice for betterment made within the South herself. Land concessions were granted by many of the states for educational endowment, and, unfortu- nately, this encouraged the establishment of too many colleges in proportion to the number of stu- dents. Higher education drew its teaching corps either from the North or from abroad ; the first fac- ulty of the University of Virginia is indicative of the difficulty confronting a Southern centre in its selection of a professional body.
Despite the fact that intermediate schools were established, and, in isolated instances, manual train- ing and instruction in agriculture were attempted, the condition of illiteracy in the South soon began to have a demoralizing effect. The general narrow- ness of the mental vision did much to weaken mental initiative ; besides which, an agricultural life did not quicken the Southern mind or push it into newer fields. The intellectual aloofness of the South dis- quieted many of her sons ; note particularly the case of Sidney Lanier, educated in Oglethorpe Univer- sity, one of the typical denominational institutions of Georgia, where he was brought in contact with types of the old world scholar, who, tempered by religious zeal, were more nearly in sympathy with the conflict at that moment confronting English thought and which embraced the initial struggle be- tween science and religion. Lanier was largely influ- enced by Professor James Woodrow, of the depart- ment of science, who eventually was called before the Southern Presbyterian Church to answer charges of a religious nature.
2S THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
Intellectual Limitations.
The educational institutions before the war lacked the element of democratization; the libraries were either restricted or else were owned by the aristo- cratic families, whose conservatism and tradition usually limited the matter of selection. The news- papers reflected the general interest of the dominant class in relation to the consuming topics of the day ; politics were usually behind the policy, and the edi- tor was more interested in party principles than he was in the gathering of general news. Since that was the case, and since, at the same time, the editor was obliged to consider the sensitiveness of his public toward the question of slavery, the paper could adopt no far-reaching view, though oftentimes it assumed a threatening tone.
The business of journalism flourishes when brought in contact with the big stream of life ; a rural population was much more eager to listen; hence, oratory might be regarded as an obstacle in the way of Southern intellectual life ; in many cases oratory and village gossip were the only ways by which a countryman could ever hope to come in touch with the world's news.
While education in the South was adequate along certain lines, society was too marked by class dis- tinction to consider the benefits of the whole com- munity. The common school progressed slowly; even in the North, the public utility idea has scarcely had a full generation to overcome, among a certain class, the prejudice against the general privileges of the public school and the public library. No doubt, the statement was not wholly true that too often education for the poor meant poor education. But it was largely true.
Bestiveness was continually shown among South-
THE LOWEK SOUTH. 29
erners regarding the inadequacy of common school instruction. Ingle mentions an attempt made in South Carolina to establish an ambulatory school, with the same object in view as that of the minis- terial circuit rider — to overcome the difficulties of isolation; but, as the same authority has pointed out, the result would have been an ' ' elementary edu- cation as thin as the population." Then, as to the character of the education received, the Southerners became so sensitive that a demand was necessarily developed for textbooks written from the Southern standpoint. In this respect, the people were as zeal- ous as the early Tractarians who used to prepare literature for children.
Such was the status of education, generally; although the common school system is rapidly devel- oping in the South, one finds even now isolated cases where either the child is sent North, or else receives private instruction at home. But, despite all these drawbacks, the type of Southern inhabitant of the poor class was none the less possessor of a certain strength of character which was not dependent upon the acquirement of education, however much it might have been added to in value thereby. To quote Ingle further : ' ' With all the allowances for the dif- ferences between the sections, for their advantages and disadvantages, the fact remains that the com- mon school system of the North did not retard the growth of pauperism and crime, as may have been expected, and that these menaces of civilization were not disproportionately enhanced by the illiteracy in the South. "
Slave Labor.
The agricultural life of the South was dependent upon slave labor, and this in turn demanded the protective watchfulness of the politician. After the
30 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
Federal party had accomplished its chief purpose of establishing a government, it passed its usefulness, for no party can change on the surface, to meet new conditions, but must revolutionize itself to the very core. As yet, the "Southern Question" had not crystallized into an issue: that is why one finds, in ante-bellum political history, so many parties which flourished on details in principles, rather than on the principles themselves. But when the Southern Question became dominant, the Whig and the Demo- crat in the South came together in solid agreement.
The slave made his impress upon the life of the Lower South. When the emigrant brought his prop- erty from Virginia, the negro was brought also; in fact, the value of the slave in the Upper South was dependent upon his demand in the Lower South. Virginia was thus materially affected. There is an outside view of the slave question that does injustice to the South at large. Statistics have never reached the spirit of a civilization, however near they may have approached the fact. Travelers through the Southern states during the existence of slavery only half saw the true conditions. The Southerner treated his slave with more leniency than the Northerner did the free black man. There may have been a moral antipathy to slavery in New England, but there was also a physical antipathy which in the South was necessarily of a different order and not so keen.
Slavery, as an institution, was wrong ; many were the Southerners who believed this, but a form of life is not suddenly swept away; slavery was sud- denly abolished in the South and reconstruction methods show the dangers which followed in conse- quence. That the South recovered at all is due quite as much to the stability of Southern character,
THE LOWER SOUTH. 31
trained, developed and strengthened by the Old Regime, as to the popular belief that by removing slavery, an incubus was being lifted from the move- ment toward progress in the Southern states. For as Mr. Edgar Gardner Murphy so aptly says, civil conflict did not eliminate the negro, and only added to the moral responsibility toward the black man, which the South, and especially the Lower South, has never thought of shirking.
For, truly, what is known as the Southern Ques- tion to-day, concerns the negro even more than it did before the war. Whatever evil was involved in slavery, the slave's position was at least defined; the moral wrong was quite as much against the white man as against the black, for it is weakening to human nature to encourage the channels of least resistance toward despotism. That the Southerner was not, in general, despotic, was a surprising fact which was due to his strength of character, a fact which was a virtue. The black man is still of an alien race, living in a community which is moving towards democracy. What part shall he play in a social democracy?
The Lower South understood the black man as slave, and understands him as a citizen. The whole of ante-bellum society encouraged the middle-man system on the plantations, and the faults of the overseer often obscured the virtues of the master.
Plantation life under slavery may have had its evils — in rare instances the overworking of the "hand," the immoral breeding of the slave, and still again the very untypical cruelty as dwelt upon in Uncle Tom's Cabin. But, as a general rule, the slave quarters had their good, their wholesome qual- ities; the slaves were attended to physically, and one might almost say that the Southerner took an
32 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
anomalous position in the effort to make the negro a good Christian, however much he remained a slave.
The slave, though in a majority of cases he grew up in ignorance, was none the less not cut aloof from a certain intellectual benefit to be derived from his personal contact with the whites who owned him. Some of them did learn to read slightly, and the house servants especially were made to benefit by the kindly attention and concern of the different members of the household. The patriarchal atti- tude of the white man in some cases kept the negro in straight paths; certainly the agricultural system afforded him a manual education which he did not obtain, even when emancipation set him free, until many years after reconstruction. To-day, Tuskee- gee and Booker Washington are emphasizing that, in general, education for the negro is disastrous unless it be the right kind of education.
But economic laws were tremendously handi- capped by the presence of the slave. Such argu- ments as Simms continually set forth as to the ben- efits accruing from slavery are now seen to be simply a natural outcome of environment and education reacting upon the individual. At the time of the war, there was, in the South, a growing antipathy to slavery, but a dilemma underlying the feeling lay in the fact that its removal meant the collapse of a whole system.
The Literary Isolation.
It is readily seen that politically, economically and psychologically, the Southern people were in themselves distinctive. Strange indeed would it have been, if, when they came to express themselves, their written word had not reflected the social life which prompted it. This is the chief value of South-
THE LOWER SOUTH. 33
ern literature, per se, that it is the peculiar expres- sion of a very distinctive social life. In the colonial period, whatever writing was done in Virginia, was naught but the transplanted creations of the immi- grant English mind. But from Simms onward, this characteristic tendency of a section is to be noted. Undoubtedly, letters throve more fully above the Mason and Dixon line. Simms went North, Lanier founded his reputation North; men such as these made authorship a profession, and had to bring themselves in touch with the outside world. It is a wonder that Southern literature flourished at all, considering the absence of literary centres, or rather one should say, the absence of invigorating contact with a stream of alert intellects, thinking intensely along lines different from the formal manner. The South at first did not welcome the advent of new ideas.
The country gentleman read his farm papers, bought his books from England, failed to support the numberless mushroom periodicals that survived oblivion, in some cases, simply because they involve interesting personalities in the making. Through- out the North, there was a considerable desire to adopt a fair-minded attitude toward the Southern writer. Sparse population was not conducive to the flourishing of magazines in the South, nor to the wide encouragement of letters; in fact, in few instances was writing any more than a pastime, an accomplishment. The majority of Southern poets, large numbers of whom were imitative, flourished only on local newspaper fame. Let those who would test the social forces in Southern literature read Joseph G. Baldwin's Flush Times in Alabama and Party Leaders, A. B. Longstreet's Georgia Scenes and Tucker's The Partisan Leader. That the South-
Vol. 10—3
34 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
ern mind was restive may be detected in such views as those given by Lanier in his letters and in his essays.
The Lower South rose into ascendency, therefore, not blind to the weakness of her system, but deter- mined to conserve her interests in the central gov- ernment. Toombs of Georgia, Clay of Alabama, Davis of Mississippi, Benjamin of Louisiana, were the types of statesmen the South depended upon at a critical period. One can appreciate the attitude of the public servants who found themselves repre- senting agricultural interests against the interests of industry. They recognized that their system imposed limitations upon them, and this knowledge did not conduce to make them content. Indeed, at the time that an unstable or rather hasty pressure was brought to bear upon the slave question, evolu- tion was effecting many changes in Southern life. There was considerable Union sentiment in the Lower South, until abolitionism welded the parties together in the righteous heat of their inherited sectional pride. This was the atmosphere in which the theory of secession gradually took hold of the entire South. As William Garrott Brown wrote in substance : The abolitionist drove the South to stand by that which they might have come to renounce Because of insistence of the New England fanatic, there arose the immediate influence of the Southern fire-eater, represented by such a type Of man as William Lowndes Yancey of Alabama.
Civil Conflict and the Lower South.
The war revealed two essential facts in the social life of the Lower South : on the one hand the weak- ness of her resources, and on the other the won- derful spirit of the people themselves, among the
THE LOWER SOUTH. 35
women quite as well as among the men. Even within their own Confederate government, the states of the Lower South were zealously alert as to their rights while the conflict was actually in progress. They saw the sacrifices, the devastation of homesteads, the rifts in large families. They saw the depression of trade, that went to pieces, as economists tell us, because of "defying economic laws and disobeying the rules of sound finance." But place these condi- tions, which were of time and circumstance, by the side of the spirit prompting the farewell addresses of the Southern senators in Washington, and there will be had the fullest measure of the Southern tem- perament— the courtesy, the forbearance, the dig- nity of such an address as Davis made; the fiery, bold, dramatic delivery of Toombs ; the quietly bril- liant oratorical numbers of Benjamin. A study of Southern statesmanship, of Southern soldiery, of Southern family life in its intimate aspects is rich in suggestiveness ; the conclusions reached will ulti- mately agree with Mr. Brown's view that "the armies of the South were finer than anything they defended." Yet something rare and worthy came out of the civilization of the Old South.
The fact that the South grappled successfully with the mistakes of reconstruction points to certain inherent excellencies bequeathed from the Old Regime, which became permanent foundations upon which new conditions could flourish. But there was a tremendous factor at work also, which, having begun before the war, served to make it possible for the new conditions to be wisely controlled. I refer to the elements of democratization before mentioned. It was not the fault of reconstruction forces that the negro was held in check, for in the social life of the Lower South immediately following the close
36 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
of the war a wide breach was made by outsiders between the former master and his former slave.
Tbe New South.
In some respects the reconstruction served to make the Lower South less calculating as to class distinction among the whites. The change that now went on, as Mr. Murphy has so adequately proven in The New South, l 1 was nothing less than the recon- stitution of an aristocratic society under democratic conditions." This has taken place in the direction of the people at large. The white man's sense of responsibility has made him think for the good of the negro, who in his turn is being taught by the wise economists of the South that there is an ideal for the negro worth striving for, even as there is an ideal for the white.
Illiteracy in the South is being reduced through the agency of all those institutions which are con- comitants of a free community. The Southerner is contributing generously to the black man's benefit, but he is in turn demanding of the negro a certain individual thrift which requires of him definite civic contribution. Statistics as to taxes will bear out the truth of the statement that the negro is no longer an incubus of Southern society. The present move- ment in the South, whether in the Upper or in the Lower, is one of great educational enthusiasm, which does not increase through outside stimulus, but through a conscious knowledge, among the Southern people themselves, of what is most wanted.
The New South means the wide development of industry; mills are running, and the state is legis- lating child labor; farmers are learning the best methods of scientific cultivation, libraries are pene- trating into the isolated districts. There is activity
THE LOWER SOUTH. 3?
in every direction, betokening the alertness of the Southern man of business. Competition has reached the South, and the desire on the part of Montgom- ery, Ala., for example, to double its population, and have 100,000 inhabitants by 1910, is only one indi- cation of the activity of all industrial and commer- cial organizations through the South.
From the intellectual side, the Lower South is exhibiting a remarkable tendency to examine herself publicly ; to bring the force of frank criticism to bear upon her problems. There is a sudden recognition that literary isolation has heretofore deprived the South of mental independence and free thought which for a long time flourished around her, without reaching her people. In other words, the civiliza- tion of the South, politically, economically and socially, is undergoing a surprising transformation. As yet this has not been sufficiently great to stamp upon the observation any definite conclusions, nor yet has it been continuous enough to indicate how far it will modify Southern character. For the immigrant has only within recent years been turned in the Southern direction.
Yet it were indeed a misfortune to lose certain qualities of the Old Regime. A new statesmanship is in store for the Lower South as soon as political suspicion no longer rests upon a war time party; a new authorship awaits the Southerner with his face toward the future; but notwithstanding, his inheritance is something large and vital.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.— Brown, William Garrott : The Lower South in American History; Butler, Pierce: Judah P. Benjamin (1907); Cairnes, John E. : Slave Power (1862); Du Bose, Witherspoon: The Life and Times of William Lowndes Yancey (1892) ; Ingle, Edward: Southern Side Lights (1896); Martin, Thomas E.: The Great Par- liamentary Battle (1905); Murphy, Edgar Gardner: The Present South (1904); Olmsted, Frederick Law: The Cotton Kingdom (London, 1856) [The same author wrote: Journeys in the Back
1 i Q
-i. -1 t7
4w
38 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
Country, Journey Through Texas and Our Slave States] ; Page, Thomas Nelson: The Old South, Essays Social and Political (1903) ; Rhodes, James Ford: History of the United States (1900); Trent. William P.: Southern Statesmen of the Old Eegimc and Life of William Gilmore Simms; Historic Towns of the Southern States (ed. by Lyman P. Powell, 1904) ; The Advancing South in The World's Work (Southern number, June, 1907, World's Work),
MONTROSE J. MOSES,
Author of The Literature of the South.
CHAPTER III.
SOCIAL LIFE OF THE APPALACHIAN REGION..
The Territory.
HE Appalachian Mountains south of Mason and Dixon's line extend from the southern border of Pennsylvania to the northern counties of Georgia and Alabama. They include the mountain masses and the enclosed valleys and coves of nine states. The region they occupy is about six hundred miles long and two hundred miles wide. The natural resources of the Appalachians are almost limitless. A king's ransom is in every county, if it were only collected. The almost unbroken forests are rich with timber ; and the earth is bursting with coal, iron, copper, zinc, salt, mica, lead, and other minerals. In the two hundred and twenty-six counties that may be said to make up the southern Appalachian region, the census enumer- ators found in 1900 about 4,000,000 people.
The Mountaineers.
Within this territory lies almost a world apart. For more than a century these mountaineers dwelt
THE APPALACHIAN KEGION. 39
practically aloof from the people in that big world lying just outside the pale of their own beloved mountains. They neither sought nor desired to have outsiders come into their lives. Naturally, this iso- lation from their kind, from the valleys and cities, as remote and vague to them as a foreign country, begot in them secretiveness and suspicion of the few who intruded into the mountain fastnesses.
So, for unnumbered years the mountain region and people remained unknown and unsought. Those grim, stern mountains made of them a stern and taciturn people to those alien to their own lives. As the onward march of civilization marked the rest of the country, bringing schools, colleges, churches and the things that uplift humanity, these lonely people of the mountain were left far behind.
The crudities of their lives, their lack of education or the facilities for gaining it, their primitive homes and methods of livelihood became more accentuated as the rest of the world moved on apace. In their rare excursions out into the world, they were made to feel this difference, and a vague longing began to stir within them.
This suspicion and aloofness frightened away, at first, those brave souls who sought to reach the mountaineer, and lift him out of the narrow channel of his life. So, for a long while this Southern moun- tain region was totally unknown to the American people. It was as if a grim and foreboding wall separated these stalwart people from all the rest of humanity. The section rested in utter seclusion from the nation 's knowledge. Even in this day many counties are not entered by railroads. Oftentimes only bridle paths lead from settlement to settlement or from cabin to cabin. Thus the mountaineer's horizon was limited by the towering summits on
40 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
every side, shutting him in from the rest of the world. *
Thus restricted, hundreds live out their lives with- out having gone fifty miles from the place of their birth. Their homes, in the main, are squalid log- cabins, often consisting of only one room. Now and then more pretentious efforts are made, where there are several rooms, with rough boards to give it dis- tinction from the others. The families are usually large, and the out-of-door life they lead gives them unusually strong and hardy physiques. Early in life hard and grinding toil begins with both boys and girls, for here, with crude methods and no knowledge to guide hand and brain to combine in the effort, it is a bitter fight for the barest necessities of life.
This fact, perhaps, accounts for the success attained by these mountain boys and girls when some hand reaches out to equip them for the struggle with the world. Frugality is ingrained, and when opportunity is given for them to widen their field of endeavor, that natural quality of saving soon moulds success where less sturdy spirits might fail. In this day you will find in cities and towns of the South many of these mountain people, successful and useful citizens.
Like the rest of Americans, the mountain people are of a composite race. There is probably no unmixed strain of blood in any community of the United States. While it is undeniable that the moun- tain people of the South are a composite race, the fact remains that they are probably of about as pure a stock as we can boast in America. The principal element is Scotch-Irish, as is indisputably proved by history, by tradition, and by the family names pre- vailing in the mountains. Mingled with the descend- ants of other races, they formed the nucleus of the distinctively and intensely American stock who were
THE APPALACHIAN REGION. 41
the pioneers of our people in their march westward. A century and a half have passed away and the men of the mountains of today are the descendants of some of those sterling pioneers. Many of these people of the mountains do perhaps need much that can be given from without the Appalachians, but they have a reserve strength that, when aroused, will speedily prove them the peers of any people.
The ancestors of the mountaineers left Europe in search of a land where a man might be "a man for a' that," and the descendants of those ancestors are jealous of their American peerage. In most of the heights of the Appalachians a foreigner is almost unknown. The percentage of foreign-born popula- tion in the mountains is less than one per cent. There is at least one spot undisturbed by foreign immigration.
The mountaineer 's bump of locality is fully devel- oped. He has a strong attachment to his native heath, its bracing air, its refreshing waters, its unre- strained liberty. " 'Pears like I cain't live nowhere else," he tells you.
The Work for the Children.
The great need of the Southern mountains is trained teachers, preachers, and home makers who have come in touch with the larger life through schools. Perhaps we could best illustrate what has been accomplished through these schools by giving a description of a school in the northwestern part of Georgia, which was founded to uplift the poor white boys of the Southern mountains and to make of them lifters and not leaners.
Beginnings are always interesting, and so the question invariably asked by those who are inter- ested in mountain schools is : ' * How did you happen
42 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
to start a school of this character 1 ' ' The answer is that it grew out of a Sunday school which was started in a little log cabin ten years ago. The writer began by inviting people to come into a Sun- day school. The children came regularly, bringing not only their brothers and sisters, but also their mothers and fathers, all shy but eager to listen and to learn. The school grew rapidly in numbers, but the accommodations were very poor and unsatis- factory.
It was soon manifest that many of these children were really unacquainted with Nature, and that they failed to appreciate the abundant beauties lying at their very doorsteps, but under instruction their interest in everything grew and their rare aptitude and quick intelligence were encouraging. Very soon they began to bring all sorts of things to decorate "our cabin" — such as grasses, leaves, ferns, and even wasps nests and colored stones — a simple col- lection from Nature 's stores which seemed to delight them, and which they would arrange around the "cabin" according to their fancies.
After the meetings had become somewhat estab- lished, the next thing was to become acquainted with these people in their cabin homes.
All of these cabins are built of rough logs, and the interiors of most of them are smoked and dark, and, in some instances, not overly clean. They are usually lighted by one or two small window-openings, but with cracks and crevices large enough for a good- sized dog to slip through. An old musket, strings of red and green peppers, and a miscellaneous col- lection of various kinds of herbs, decorate the raft- ers, while pots, pans and other cooking utensils are usually scattered about the floor of the one living- room ; the only other room of the family consisting of a small "lean-to" adjacent to the cabin proper,
THE APPALACHIAN REGION. 43
used for sleeping and other purposes. As the cabin door is always open, in the usual Southern fashion, there is, fortunately, plenty of ventilation, and the children live in the open air during the entire year. But the people are poor — in some instances, very poor ; and they have no money to educate their chil- dren, nor have them trained in useful work or remu- nerative labor, although both parents and children are willing and anxious to learn. They only need opportunities and a guiding hand to make them useful and successful men and women whose lives would be a blessing to humanity. To this end the school at Rome, Ga., was established — to teach these mountain people to do well the common things of life, and to inspire them with confidence and ambi- tion— and its success has been abundantly encour- aging.
The fame of the school spreads in the mountains from year to year. At first only the boys in the immediate neighborhood attended the school, but now they come from not only Georgia, but from Ala- bama and Tennessee, and these splendid and sturdy young lives are being moulded for broader and better things.
To rescue these people from the isolation, the pov- erty and the ignorance that has bound them for more than a century, is a great work for the South, for to them we must look to till the soil intelligently, to people the factories, to teach and preach and to tear down that intangible wall that has for so long held a people aloof from its part in the world's regen- eration.
MARTHA McCnESNEY BERRY,
Director of the Berry School, Rome, Ga.
44 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER IV. EUROPEAN INFLUENCES IN THE SOUTH.
HE solidarity of public opinion in the South has been so often commented upon that it is difficult to realize the heterogeneous eler ments employed in making her popula- tion. The "solid South" is not only a political but in many respects a social and even a religious fact, so confirmed has the section become in conservatism and orthodoxy. First by reason of slavery and then of the war and then of reconstruction, the people have been bound together by the strongest of ties. They have acted together and thought together. The popular tradition that has been cher- ished as most typical of the South is that of the Virginia Cavalier — his hospitality, his refinement, his chivalric spirit. Widely different as are other elements of the population, they have all been modi- fied to some extent by this tradition. It is strange that some historians still speak of the War of Seces- sion as if it were a renewal of the old conflict be- tween the Puritans and Cavaliers.
Diverse Elements in Southern Society.
It is well to remember, however, that there are many diverse elements in Southern society, all of them suggesting a background of European influ- ences. The Huguenots of South Carolina, the Scotch - Irish of the Piedmont section and of the southwest, the French and Spanish of Louisiana, the Spanish and Germans of Texas; at a later time, the great Methodist and Baptist churches — constituting an increasing middle class — all of these types have been
EUROPEAN INFLUENCES IN SOUTH. 45
important factors in Southern civilization. Some of them are picturesque survivals in an industrial and democratic republic, destined yet, when the sol- idarity of opinion and of life has been broken, to play a commanding part in a more complex civiliza- tion. The various commonwealths and cities, viewed in the light of their origins and early history rather than of their later, suggest a diversity of ideas, cus- toms and traditions that must inevitably lead to a finer social and political life in the years to come.
Along with the solidarity of public opinion there has been a marked provincialism, commented upon by all outsiders and admitted even by Southern writers. For the reasons already indicated the South was for nearly three-quarters of a century largely shut out from the influences of modern life and modern thought. If, as Charles Dudley Warner says, "the root of provincialism is localism, a con- dition of being aside and apart from the general movement of contemporary life," then the South was provincial. It is well to remember, however, that prior to the time when slavery became a fixed economic and social institution, Southern cities and states were the most cosmopolitan sections of the country — they were most sensitive to European influences. At the time when the sections met each other in the councils of the Kevolutionary period, New England leaders were far more provincial than the great leaders of Virginia, who had a certain lordly compass of mind that made them citizens of the world. Virginia Cavaliers, as represented in Thackeray's The Virginians, and as seen in the jour- nals and letters of the Eighteenth 'century, were in close touch with their kinsmen across the waters —in trade, in learning, and in social customs and traditions. In South Carolina, especially in Charles-
46 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
ton, the contact with English and Scottish univer- sities and the survival of French influences among the Huguenots, served to make Charleston more cosmopolitan than Boston in the early years of the Nineteenth century. Josiah Quincy, on a visit to that city, was so struck with its architectural beauty and its cultivated society, as to remark that he found there what he never expected • to find in America. In Mobile and New Orleans, the French and Spanish rule, attended as it was by European ideals of architecture, education and dramatic art, served to keep intact the life and society of the Old World. Southern universities, notably the uni- versities of Virginia and South Carolina, were among the first in the country to feel the influence of foreign institutions in the changes of curriculum and in the constitution of their faculties.
Some of these European influences in Southern life it is our purpose to set forth, or, rather, sug- gest. Limitations of space demand that the set- tlement and early history of the various colonies be taken for granted, so well known are they to the student of American history. The coming of the Cavaliers after the establishment of the Common- wealth in England, the later migration of the Scotch- Irish by way of Pennsylvania, the mingling of the Huguenots and English in South Carolina, the influ- ence of the constitution of Locke and Hobbes on the state governments of the Carolinas, the settlement of the Spanish in Florida, and of the French and Spanish in Louisiana, and of the Catholics in Mary- land may well be passed over in this paper. Nor is it necessary to speak of all foreigners who exerted a strong influence in various communities; for in nearly every state there were certain teachers, or preachers, or publicists, who gave impetus to indi-
EUROPEAN INFLUENCES IN SOUTH. 47
vidual lives. Almost any city has its romantic stories that look across the seas ; and Southern biog- raphies have much to say of traits inherited from remote ancestors. We may admit, too, the influence of foreign literature on individual writers, or the social influence of brilliant women, like Madame Le Vert, of Mobile, who first in that city, and later in Washington, and later still in the capitals of Europe, reigned with undisputed charm.
English Influence in the South.
The most striking European influence in the South — extending even to the war — was naturally that of England. The close contact between Virginia and the mother country may best be seen in the career and personality of William Byrd, the brilliant mer- chant and publicist of the middle of the Eighteenth century. Descended, like so many other Virginians, from distinguished English ancestors, he was edu- cated in London, lived there for a number of years on intimate terms with some of the most prominent men of Queen Anne's reign, established himself at Westover, which was one of the most picturesque reproductions of English rural estates, and collected the largest and most significant library in the colo- nial era. The catalogue of his library indicates that he was familiar not only with the classical writers, but with the contemporary writings of Swift, Addi- son, and other writers of the Augustan age. His own charming style — the perfection of good breed- ing— derives from English contemporaries. His daughter, Evelyn Byrd, was one of the social lights, not only of colonial Virginia, but of London, where she is reputed to have been beloved by the dashing Earl of Peterborough.
English culture thus typified in William Byrd was
48 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
characteristic of all the most prominent families of Virginia, many of whose sons were educated at Eton, Oxford or Cambridge. Kich old mahogany furniture, finely wrought silverware, portraits by London artists, and mellow Elzevirs and Lintots are precious heirlooms in many Virginia homes.
The same may be said of Charleston. Travelers were impressed with the cosmopolitan air of that city. Duke La Eochefoucault wrote in 1796: "In no town of the United States does a foreigner experience more benevolence or find more entertain- ing society than in Charleston. Many of the inhabitants of South Carolina, having been in Europe, have in consequence acquired a greater knowledge of our manners and a stronger partiality to them than the people of the northern states. Con- sequently, the European modes of life are here more prevalent.'*
As Virginia's social life was a reproduction of English rural life, so that of Charleston was mod- eled after that of London, the rich planters of the surrounding country making the city their head- quarters during the winter. Many of these men had amassed enough wealth to travel through Europe as gentlemen of leisure. Out of 114 American stu- dents in the various* law schools of London during the colonial period forty-four were from South Caro- lina. The young doctors generally went to Edin- burgh, and the merchants to Franee and Holland. Hence we have in the first year of the Nineteenth century a group of highly cultured leaders. Hugh S. Legare, himself a graduate of the University of Edinburgh and for a while the leader of social and literary circles in Charleston, was editor-in-chief of the Southern Review (1828-1832), modeled after the Edinburgh Review. He was justified, perhaps,
EUROPEAN INFLUENCES IN SOUTH. 49
in claiming, in one of the early numbers of his maga- zine, that the attainments of Charlestonians in polite literature were far superior to those of their con- temporaries in the North, and the standards of scholarship in Charleston were much higher than any other city on the continent.
Evidences of the culture of Charleston are found, not so much in literature as in the establishment of her well equipped library, her philosophical society, her interest in science as attested by the lectures of Agassiz on the glaciers of Switzerland at Charleston College in 1849, and in the patronage of art by vari- ous Charlestonians. Ralph Izard, especially, did much to create an art "atmosphere" by securing pictures of himself and family from the best con- temporary English and American artists. Portraits by Reynolds, Gainsborough, Gilbert Stuart and Copley, and miniatures by Malbone, Washington Allston and the native Charlestonian, Fraser, for a long time cherished by rich families of the city and of the surrounding country, are now scattered in the art galleries of Europe and America. It is not surprising that Washington Allston should have been born in that region and received his first impulse to an artistic career from his own people.
The culture of Charleston, however, is seen best of all in the architecture of the city, and especially in that of the noble St. Michael's Church. It is not unnatural that Henry James, in his recent visit to this country, seeking for picturesque features in American scenery in architecture, should have been so "romantically affected" by the city of Charleston, by reason of its very contrast to much contempo- rary American life and art. "The high, compli- cated, inflated spire of St. Michael's produces the impression of grace and form as nothing else in
Vol. 10—4
50 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
America," he says. In the sweet old churchyard, ancient authority seemed to him "to sit among the sun-warmed tombs and the inter-related slabs and the extravagant flowers. " " The place feels itself, in the fine old dusty archway, the constituted temple of a faith." Still more noteworthy is Owen Wister's tribute to the city in his remarkable novel, Lady Baltimore. Against the background of modern industrialism and democracy he draws an appealing picture of "the most lovely, the most wistful town in America." "This King's Port, this little city of oblivion, held, shut in with its lavender and pressed- rose memories, a handful of people who are like that great society of the world, the high society of dis- tinguished men and women who exist no more, but who touch history with a light hand, and left their mark upon it in a host of memoirs and letters that we read to-day with a starved and homesick long- ing in the midst of our modern welter of democ- racy. With its silent houses and gardens, its silent streets, its silent vistas of the blue water in the sunshine, this beautiful, sad place was winning my heart and making it ache. Nowhere else in America such charms, such character, such true elegance as here." And, speaking more particularly of the gates and churchyard of St. Michael's, he adds : "Of these three houses of God, that one holds the most precious flame, the purest light, which treasures the holy fire which came from France. ' '
French Influences in the South.
The suggestion in the last sentence of the French influence in American life may serve as an introduc- tion to a further consideration of the influence of France on the civilization of the South. In addition to the Huguenot migration, there should be noted
EUROPEAN INFLUENCES IN SOUTH. 51
the French influence that sprang up in the col- onies in the latter part of the Eighteenth century, and during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. It was natural that, after the romantic devotion of French soldiers under the leadership of LaFayette to the American cause, there should have been an effort to mould the ideas of the country in accord- ance with French ideals. The political influence of France during and just after the Revolutionary War need not detain us here. The writings of Paine and Jefferson, and the political celebrations and fiery speeches of the leaders of the new Republican party, explain the great outburst of democracy. More noteworthy, from the standpoint of American cul- ture, was the grand project of Chevalier Quesnay de Beaurepaire for uniting intellectually America and France. He was the grandson of the famous economist, Doctor Quesnay, Court Physician of Louis XV. Coming to this country with LaFayette, he was wounded in one of the battles of the Revo- lutionary War. While he was recuperating he trav- eled rather extensively throughout the country and conceived the idea of improving it by the introduc- tion of French culture and the fine arts. His idea was heartily approved by Mr. John Page, the lieu- tenant-governor and afterwards the governor of Virginia, who urged him to procure professors from Europe to establish a kind of French Academy of the arts and sciences. Because of the cooperation of a large number of prominent Virginians, he decided to make Richmond the headquarters of the Academy, with branch academies in Baltimore, Phil- adelphia and New York. He went so far as to lay the foundation of the Academy building in Rich- mond, and then set out for France to interest the French Academy and other artistic and scientific
52 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
societies of France, Germany and England in the project. He believed that the highest special train- ing might be given to American students in foreign languages, architecture, painting, sculpture and the sciences. He succeeded admirably in winning the attention of leading men, and even of the king and queen of France and their court. The plans were brought to naught, however, by the cataclysm of the French Revolution, which began in 1789.
Jefferson's Interest in Foreign Educational Methods.
Among those most interested in Quesnay's scheme was Thomas Jefferson, who was at that time rep- resenting the colonies in Paris. Jefferson had for a number of years been interested in promoting popu- lar education and in improving the standards of scholarship in Virginia. As early as 1783 he had suggested the modernization of the curriculum of William and Mary College, his alma mater, espe- cially urging that modern languages and the sciences be added to what was then the stereotyped courses in English and American colleges. In Paris, partly as the result of Quesnay's plans, but more on account of a temperamental interest in education, he began to study the higher institutions of learning in Europe. Always sensitive and even susceptible to contemporary influences, Jefferson's open mind seized eagerly upon the most progressive ideas then current with regard to higher education. He was, it need scarcely be said, profoundly affected by the political ideas then creating the Revolution in France. He had also been on the lookout for the latest inventions and discoveries and ideas that might be of interest to the American people. Never was there a more cosmopolitan mind than his. Dur- ing his five years' life in Europe he kept Harvard,
EUROPEAN INFLUENCES IN SOUTH. 53
Yale, William and Mary and the College of Phila- delphia advised of all new publications that seemed to him important.
As he studied foreign institutions and sought to supply the needs of American colleges he conceived the idea of building a great university for his own state. He saw little hope of making much out of William and Mary. He first thought of transfer- ring to some place in Virginia the entire faculty of the University of Geneva, which had been affected by a political revolution at home. This faculty was composed of some of the most learned scholars of the continent. He was discouraged in his plan, however, by Washington, who thought the plan of importing a body of foreign professors was unwise — for political reasons, as well as on account of their ignorance of the English language. Jefferson, how- ever, became more and more interested in building up some sort of higher institution of learning. As early as 1783 he had planned the Albemarle Acad- emy for his own county. After he retired from the presidency he resumed his plans, but soon changed the name of the institution to Central College, and later to the University of Virginia. He corres- ponded with many eminent scholars, notably Priestley, a distinguished scientist and writer on political subjects, who had been peVsecuted in Eng- land on account of his Unitarianism. Jefferson hoped to secure books, papers, and scientific appa- ratus from Priestley, with the idea that a university would be established on a plan "broad and liberal and modern." Jefferson was also influenced by other foreigners, notably Dupont de Nemours, a friend of Turgot and a well known French economist and philosopher. The latter, while on a visit to this country, drew up a scheme for a complete system
54 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
of education in the United States, which influenced Jefferson's plans for the educational development of Virginia. In 1803 Jefferson wrote to Professor Pictet, of Geneva, asking for his ideas on the teach- ing of science in universities, saying, "I believe every son of science feels a strong and disinter- ested desire of promoting it in every part of the earth."*
But Jefferson would have been unable to carry out his plans for university education in Virginia if he had not had assistance from prominent men in his own state. In 1806 Joseph C. Cabell returned from three years' travel and study in Europe. He had visited most of the prominent European univer- sities, including those of Italy. He had studied the novel system of Pestalozzi, which he afterwards endeavored to introduce into Virginia. He had heard the lectures of Cuvier and other professors at the College de France. He had visited the universities of Leyden, Oxford and Cambridge. His preeminent interest was in science; and he first tried to get a museum of national history at William and Mary, but Jefferson wrote him that instead of wasting his time in attempting to patch up an existing institu- tion, he should direct his efforts to a higher and more valuable object : ' ' Found a new one which shall be worthy of the first state of the Union." So Cabell became Jefferson's most valuable ally; as a mem- ber of the legislature from 1809 to 1829, he gave his persistent energy and wisdom to the furtherance of Jefferson's plans.
When at last public opinion was committed to the establishment of the University of Virginia, Jefferson entrusted to Francis W. Gilmer the deli-
* For the account of Jefferson's relation to the University of Vir- ginia every student Is indebted to Herbert B. Adams's admirable mono- graph on that subject.
EUROPEAN INFLUENCES IN SOUTH. 55
cate and difficult task of selecting the professors in England. Gilmer had come under the influence of Abbe Correa, who was an exile from Portugal and delivered lectures on botany in Philadelphia in 1813. Gilmer met him at Jefferson's home, and attended his lectures. He considered Correa "the most extraordinary man now living. " 4 ' He has read, seen, understands, and remembers everything contained in books, or to be learned by travels, observations, and of conversations with learned men. He is a member of every philosophical society in the world. ' ' Gilmer corresponded regularly with George Tick- nor, when the latter was studying at Gottingen, and with Pictet at the University of Geneva. He pur- chased many books from abroad, thus becoming a specialist in botany, while at the same tune he was one of the leading lawyers of his state.
He therefore thoroughly agreed with Jefferson that the faculty of the university should be com- posed of specialists, and not of men who had a knowledge of things in general, however cultured they might be. With this in view he embarked for England in 1818, with instructions from Jefferson that the high qualification of the professors would be the only means by which they could give to the new institution "splendor and preeminence over all its sister seminaries.'* Gilmer had the aid of such distinguished men as Dugald Stewart, Dr. Parr, Lord Brougham, as well as the universities of Eng- land and Scotland. He finally selected Professor Blaetterman, a German, for the chair of modern languages, and four Englishmen, who with two Vir- ginians formed the first faculty. While the experi- ment of foreign professors was not altogether satis- factory, yet the tradition that was established of securing highly trained men was a new departure
56 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
in American education. In 1820 there were only two men in the Harvard faculty who had been educated in Europe — Edward Everett and George Ticknor.
While most of the professors were English- men, the curriculum of the university was largely determined by the ideas that Jefferson had absorbed from the Continent. The introduction of the sciences, the emphasis laid upon modern languages and even upon Anglo-Saxon, the pioneer work of instruction in political science, the general freedom of the elect- ive system, and the development of single schools within the university were all contributions of first importance to American education. Professor Long established the tradition of first-rate instruction in the classics ; when he returned to England in 1828 he left Gessner Harrison as his successor. Long kept Harrison posted on all the latest German discussions in German philology, and thus the students of the University of Virginia were familiar with the labors of Boph before that great man was fully recog- nized in Germany himself. The wisdom of the intro- duction of a school of modern languages was seen in the influence thereof on Edgar Allan Poe, who was one of the first matriculates of the university. He took high rank in French, and made his first repu- tation as a writer by a translation of one of Tasso's poems. It is a noteworthy fact, as bearing directly on the subject of this discussion, that Poe was the most distinctly European of all American writers.*
The influence of the experiment in higher educa- tion at the University of Virginia was far-reaching. It gave an impulse to the noteworthy development of state universities during the past half century.
* The buildings and general plan of the University suggest some of the most illustrious examples of classic architecture. Jefferson's idea was that students and visitors might have before them reminders of the most famous buildings and ruins of Europe.
EUROPEAN INFLUENCES IN SOUTH. 57
In the Southern states, especially, its prestige has been supreme. Perhaps the most immediate in- fluence was on the University of South Carolina. Jefferson had one disappointment in the selection of his faculty — his inability to hold Thomas Cooper, on account of the objection of the religious organizations to his reputed infidelity. Cooper, like his father-in-law, Priestley, was an exile in this country from England, after having lived in Paris at the most exciting time of the Revolution. Edu- cated at Oxford, he was out of sympathy with all the conservative ideals of England, and as a writer on political subjects gave great impetus to demo- cratic ideals in this country. Successively a lawyer in Philadelphia and a professor of chemistry at Dickinson College, he was elected the first professor at the University of Virginia, Jefferson speaking of him as "the greatest man in America in the powers of his mind and in acquired information — the corner- stone of our edifice." It was a grievous blow to give him up, but Jefferson had the satisfaction of seeing him elected to the University of South Caro- lina in 1819. At this institution as professor of political economy and later as president, he exerted a wide influence. By his contributions to the South- ern Review, he became one of the main allies of John C. Calhoun in the advocacy of free trade.
His successor was Francis Lieber, who in the course of twenty years ' stay at the university wrote the three works by which he is remembered. Although he never was in sympathy with the institu- tions of the South and continually fretted at the lack of congenial fellow-workers, he owed much to his position. Born in Berlin, he had studied in the leading universities of his country, and espe- cially under Niebuhr. He had translated French
58 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
and German works and was in every way alive to contemporary influences, being a most pronounced liberal in his political opinions. He became intensely interesting in his teaching, bringing into his class- room an air of contemporaneousness that must have been particularly significant in South Carolina. One of his first requests of the board of trustees was for an appropriation of $50 for foreign newspapers that his students might know current events as well as past history.
German Influences in the South.
The influence of Lieber suggests the coming into Southern life of German ideas. There is no such movement, to be sure, as that which played such an important part in the culture and literature of New England in the middle years of the century, nor is it to be compared with French influence in the Southern states. And yet there were men here and there who came under the influence of German universities. As early as 1830 a young Virginian was giving lectures on Anglo-Saxon at Eandolph- Macon College — lectures based on the unpublished researches of German scholars. Professor Gilder- sleeve gives the best account of what Germany meant to a few young Southerners, who like himself studied at German universities. In his nineteenth year Carlyle introduced him to Goethe, the most impor- tant of all the teachers he ever had. Goethe's apho- risms were his daily food, and he repeated the lyrics over and over to himself in his long solitary ram- bles. This was the epoch of what he called his Teu- tomania — the time when he "read German, wrote German, listened to German, and even talked Ger- man." It is not remarkable, then, that he decided
EUROPEAN INFLUENCES IN SOUTH. 59
in 1850 to go to a German university. Three years at Berlin, Gottingeu and Bonn, while giving him special training as a classical philologian, contrib- uted to the widening of his culture. "In the early fifties," he says, "to see Germany, to enter a Ger- man university, to sit at the feet of the great men who had made and were making German scholar- ship illustrious, was a prospect to stir the blood of aspiring youth." The spirit of the reproduction of antiquity was ' ' the formula of the men who taught and of the students who crowded the seminaria and lecture rooms. ' '
Contemporary with him were two young Charles- tomans who afterwards went into law, and a little later Thomas K. Price, who first at Bandolph-Macon College and later at the University of Virginia, had such a marked influence on the teaching of English in Southern universities. When the war broke out Sidney Lanier, heeding the advice of Professor Woodrow who had studied under Agassiz and then for two years in Germany, was just on the point of going to Heidelberg. In the seventies a larger number of Southerners went to Germany for their education — men who have had a large part in shap- ing the educational ideals of the present South. The chancellor of Vanderbilt University, the presi- dents of Tulane and of the University of North Carolina, the vice-chancellor of the University of the South, not to mention some of the most prominent professors in these and other institutions, received their higher education in Germany. It is a note- worthy fact that Southern scholars were pioneers in the editing of Anglo-Saxon texts in this country. When Johns Hopkins University was established Professor Gildersleeve of the University of Virginia was the first member of the faculty elected; his
60 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
long and illustrious career is an evidence of the far-reaching influence of Germany on American life.
Nor has the German influence been confined to academic circles. Here and there throughout the South there are most interesting German settle- ments, notably those in western Texas. Olmsted observed in 1857 that half of the population of west- ern Texas was German. They brought to that state not only industry and a sane mode of living — often in contrast with the slip-shod methods of slavehold- ers— but a feeling for culture and especially for music that seemed totally at variance with their surroundings. When Sidney Lanier visited San Antonio in quest of health in 1873, he found some musicians who had no little to do with fixing his decision to devote himself to a musical career. The picture he gives in one of his letters suggests a most unusual phenomenon in Southern life. He went one night to the Maennerchor where he found seventeen Germans seated at the singing table. "Long neck bottles of Rhine wine were opened and tasted, great pipes and cigars were all afire; the leader, Herr Thielepape — an old man with long, white beard and moustache, formerly mayor of the city — rapped his tuning fork vigorously, gave the chords by rapid arpeggios of his voice (a wonderful wild, high tenor, such as thou wouldst dream that the old wealth harpers have, wherewith to sing songs that would cut against the fierce sea glass), and off they all swung into such a noble old German full voiced lied, that imperious tears rushed into my eyes. And so— I all the time worshiping — with these great chords we drove through the evening until twelve o'clock."
EUROPEAN INFLUENCES IN SOUTH. 61 Spanish and French Influences in the South.
Lanier was impressed, also, with the striking beauty of San Antonio, and especially with the reminders of Spanish rule and tradition. It goes almost without saying that the most picturesque of all Southern cities is New Orleans, and that the resistance of her social life to the ideals of Ameri- can civilization has been most persistent. Her very isolation, as well as her long domination by Spanish and French influences, has kept her out from the currents of American life. For this very reason her Spanish architecture and her French customs and traditions have been among the most potent illustrations of European influence in the South. Miss Grace King, in her charming book, New Orleans; The Place and the People, compares the city to "a Parisian who came two centuries ago to the banks of Mississippi — partly out of curiosity for the new world, partly out of ennui for the old, and who, 'ma foi,' as she would say with a shrug of her shoulders, has never cared to return to her mother country." It is needless to attempt here a description of the place or even a suggestion of the wealth of romance that has fascinated all who have ever come within the sphere of her influence. Charles Dudley Warner has characterized New Orleans as "the most cosmopolitan of provincial cities; its comparative isolation has secured the development of provincial traits and manners, has preserved the individuality of the many races that give it color, morals and character, while its close relation to France and the constant influx of North- ern men of business and affairs have given it the air of a metropolis." The Creoles gave the tone to New Orleans; "and it was the French culture, the French view of life that was diffused. French
62 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
was a study and a possession, not a fashionable accomplishment. ' '
The native literature of New Orleans, despite the patient work of scholars, is not yet the possession of the American people, but Lafcadio Hearn and George W. Cable have done much to interpret the romance of this city. Much of the fineness of the lat- ter's remarkable stories must be attributed to his early environment, while the direction of the former's life was determined in no small degree by his twelve years' stay in a city where he could feel the charm of a people that still retained the charac- teristics of childhood. Hearn said in one of his recently published letters: "Now I am with the Latins ; I live in a Latin city ; I seldom hear the Eng- lish tongue except when I enter the office for a few brief hours. * I see beauty all around me—
a strange, tropical, intoxicating beauty. I consider it my artistic duty to let myself be absorbed into this new life, and study its forms and color and passion. This is a land of magical moons
and of witches and of war locks; and were I to tell you all that I have seen and heard in these years, in this enchanted City of Dreams, you would verily deem me mad. ' ' And again he says, speaking of a house in the Creole quarter, "I do not believe one could find anything more picturesque outside of Venice or Florence."
When New Orleans, already feeling the impress of modern civilization, shall have come into its full possibilities as the result of the opening of the Pan- ama Canal, she will occupy a far more commanding place in the life and culture of this country than she has. For the very reason that her unique civiliza- tion has its foundation in European rather than in American culture, she will prove a striking contrast
ARISTOCRACY OF XORTHERX XECK. 63
to much that is monotonous and even sterile in American life.
And, indeed, when all the influences that have been suggested in connection with Southern communities and commonwealths have been freed from the limita- tions of the past — limitations due to solidarity and to provincialism — the republic will be the richer. The arrested development of the past may prove a blessing in disguise; the reaction against some of the excesses of modernity may be healthily aided by a section which has such a rich inheritance of romance, chivalry and culture.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Adams, Herbert B. : Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia; Bisland, Elizabeth: Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn; Cable, George W. : Old Creole Days; Curtis, W. E. : The True Thomas Jefferson; King, Grace: New Orleans: The Place and the People; Lodge, Henry Cabot: English Colonies in America: Eaveuel : Charleston : The Place and the People ; Rhodes, James Ford : History of the United States, 1850-77; Thackeray, W M.: The Vir- ginians; Trent, W. P.: English Culture in Virginia; Wister, Owen: Lady Baltimore; The Writings of William Byrd (ed. by John Spencer Bassett).
EDWIN MIMS,
Professor of English Literature, Trinity College; editor South Atlantic Quarterly.
CHAPTER V.
THE AEISTOCRACY OF THE NORTHERN NECK.
The Settlement of the Northern Neck.
HAT section of Virginia which is watered and bounded by the Rappahannock and Po- tomac rivers and known as the Northern Neck is one of the most interesting com- munities in the entire South. Within the com-
64 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
pass of its few counties there arose during the Eight- eenth century a number of important families which produced great popular leaders and great statesmen. Here it was that Washington, Mason and Monroe were born ; here resided the great family of the Lees, and here many leading spirits of colonial and revolu- tionary Virginia had their homes. Almost without exception these men were the product of the same period and were born in the same social circle ; their antecedents were practically the same; they were brought up with the same social and political ideals ; they had much in common. If such a community and such a society could produce men of so great emi- nence, that community and that society are worthy of examination.
Although the Northern Neck was visited by Smith and by other early adventurers, it was not settled until after 1640, when it became the home of certain immigrants from Kent Island. These early planters were speedily reinforced by merchants, attracted by the deep-flowing rivers and by other facilities for trade. Despite Indian wars and the temporary clos- ing of the Neck to settlers by a treaty with the Indians, these merchants and planters multiplied and prospered. One finds mention of Col. Richard Lee, George Mason, the Balls, the Popes and John Wash- ington before 1660, but one looks in vain for the other famous names of the community. It appears that two generations of settlers lived, flourished and died before the real aristocracy of the Neck arrived. This fact, which is to be observed elsewhere in Virginia, remains one of the mysteries of earlv American colonization.
The " Cavalier Immigration," which took place during the Commonwealth period in England, is gen- erally supposed to have exercised a potential influ-
ARISTOCRACY OF NORTHERN NECK. 65
ence on settlement in Virginia, but so far as the records show, this immigration had no more effect on the Northern Neck than the coming of any similar number of equally prominent men would have had.
It was with the Restoration that the proprietor- ship of the Northern Neck — a most interesting epi- sode in Virginia's history — became valid. During his exile, Charles II. had granted the entire North- ern Neck to some half-dozen of his courtiers, and when, with the Restoration, he returned to power, he renewed the grant. Under its terms the lands of the Neck were practically given to these followers of the King, who were empowered to grant them to settlers for a fixed quit-rent.
The Virginia authorities protested in vain against this act of royal favor, and were eventually com- pelled to permit a new survey of the Neck and the renewal of land-grants from the hands of the Pro- prietors. The latter decided that all land-holders who had taken up lands since September 2, 1661, must apply for their lands anew, and must pay a quit-rent of two shillings per hundred acres for them. For some years the settlers disregarded this order, and gave the Proprietors much concern as to their hold- ings; but at length, following the example of Rich- ard Lee, they agreed to pay their quit-rents and accept the rule of the proprietors. Meanwhile, the control of the original grant had passed to Thomas, Lord Culpeper, and from him to his daughter Kath- erine, who married Lord Fairfax. Her son, Thomas, sixth lord, was Proprietor of the Neck during the period of its greatest prosperity and resided for many years in the colony.
This peculiar ownership of the Neck, interesting in itself, appears to have been merely an incident in the history of the community, for it was as easy to
Vol. 10—5
66 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
secure grants from the colonial land office as from Lord Fairfax. On the other hand, the agents of Lord Fairfax were generally residents of the Neck and saw to it that their friends and relatives secured an abundance of lands and easy terms. Thus, as late as 1743, William Beverley applied to Lord Fair- fax for 10,000 acres adjoining the Carters' 50,225 acres, and incidentally mentions a second tract of 10,000 acres which he and a friend would like to take up. Again, Landon Carter patented 66,800 acres and, with others, secured 41,000 acres in a single day, while Councillor Robert Carter's entire holdings of 63,093 acres were held by patent from Lord Fairfax. With the beginning of the Eighteenth century ap- peared those families which were destined to form the aristocracy of the Northern Neck and the basis of its social fabric. In addition to the Lees, Balls, Masons, and Washingtons, the records mention the Carters, the Tayloes, the Wormeleyes, the Newtons, the Fitzhughs, and others. The heads of most of these families belonged to honorable, though unti- tled, families in England. Many of them had pre- viously settled in other counties of Virginia, while some came direct from England, or else had removed from Maryland.
Special Characteristics.
Taking up large grants of land along the rivers Eappahannock and Potomac and their tributary branches, these men established families in the course of the next decade, multiplied, intermarried and established a society having certain marked char- acteristics.
These characteristics were three in number : First, the leading families distributed among themselves the military and political offices of the colony and
ARISTOCRACY OF NORTHERN NECK. 67
practically voiced the will of the whole Northern Neck. Family ties were close and political prefer- ment was easy ; no sooner did one member of a great family secure a place under His Majesty's govern- ment than he would at once seek offices for his kins- men. In the course of time, as the result of this system, the Council of Virginia became practically the assembly of the leading families, with due con- sideration given the aristocrats of the Northern Neck. In like manner, the militia officers and the Burgesses were, almost without exception, repre- sentatives of a few prominent families. Naturally enough, when the crisis of the Revolution came, these men assumed the leadership of the people in the conventions, in the assemblies, in Congress and in the field.
The second characteristic of the social order of the Neck was the rapid increase and intermarriage of the aristocrats. Take the Carter family as an exam- ple : John Carter I. had five wives and his son, John Carter II., was twice married, the second time to a widow. The first husband of this lady was thrice married, and her mother had five or six husbands. Charles Carter I., of Cleve, son of "King" Carter, had three wives — Taliaferro, Walker and Byrd — and was the father of twelve children. Councillor Eobert Carter, though married but once, had seven- teen children. Similarly repeated marriages in other families made connections very numerous and led directly to the formation of a society which was suffi- cient in itself and hence exclusive.
The last important characteristic of this social order was its practical unity of interest. The main- tenance of their large landed interests, a proper mar- ket for their crops, the assurance of their places in the councils of the colony, the integrity of their social
68 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
aristocracy — these were things which concerned all alike. Hence it was that the large planters presented a solid front against all reforms and all parties which did not accord with their own interests. Hence, also, when the Revolution came, the leading families, without exception, threw in their lot with the colo- nists. Only the Ralph Wormeleyes, father and son, Robert Beverley and some connections of the Grymes family, joined Governor Dunmore.
Homes as Social Centres.
The social system thus characterized had many interesting and commendable features. Most of the leading planters built, before 1750, homes that were centres of social activity. "King" Carter had his original residence at Corotoman, and of his descend- ants Charles Carter had his at Cleve, Landon Carter lived at Sabine Hall, Robert Carter at Nomini Hall. The Tayloe seat was Mount Airy, the Grymes resided at Brandon, the Lees at Menokin, at Chantilly and at Stratford, the Wormeleyes at Rosegill, the Masons at Gunston Hall, the Fitzhughs at Marmion and Eagle's Nest, the Washingtons at Bushfield and, a little later, at Mount Vernon.
While the magnificence of some of these homes has been greatly exaggerated, most of them were comfortable and some were even commodious. For example, Nomini Hall, the seat of Councillor Robert Carter, was a brick mansion, 76 feet by 44 feet, with four rooms on each of its two floors, all of them large and handsome. The large porch of the house could be seen from a distance of six miles, and its stuccoed walls stood out boldly against the land- scape. Around it were four smaller brick houses, set at the four corners of a rectangle and serving as schoolhouse, coachhouse, stable and workhouse. Back
ARISTOCRACY OF NORTHERN NECK. 69
of these stretched the other outhouses with the " house-quarters," making a little street. Scarcely less extensive were Kosegill, Mount Airy, and other homes. The interiors of these mansions displayed various degrees of elegance, reflecting the taste of their owners. Col. John Tayloe, of Mount Airy, who was famous for his race horses, decorated the walls of his mansion with twenty-four paintings of Eng- lish race horses, " drawn masterfully and set in ele- gant gilt frames." Practically all of the house fur- nishings of these great land holders came by direct importation from England, and their loss caused great distress to their owners. William Byrd has, left a most humorous account of Mrs. Spotswood's distress when her great imported pier-glass was ruined by the gambols of a tame deer.
In these homes was always a welcome for the vis- -vJ? itor, whatever his estate. Frequently guests would dine and remain over night with a family, when only their namesjEere known, and these only to the host in person^ wandering clergymen were ever welcome at Nomini Hall; visiting sea captains were given cheer at all the homes ; even overseers sat with the family by invitation and shared in their hospitality. In the main, however, visitors were neighbors of the aristocracy, and often remained for a day at a time. It was not unusual to have half a dozen guests return with the master from church. At his annual ball, Col. Landon Carter gladly entertained and lodged a score; even Presbyterian James Gordon had his dozen guests to hear James Waddell preach.
This hospitality included abundant provision for the wants of the inner man. The nearby rivers and bays gave ample supplies of fish and of oysters, while the large farms supplied fresh mutton and, less fre- quently, beef. Fruits, vegetables and the like came
70 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
from the plantation. There was no sparing of drinks: porter, beer, cider, rum and brandy toddy were served with a single dinner at Nomini Hall, and on another occasion the delicate sensibilities of those who were drinking Madeira and lime punch were offended by a sea captain who demanded grog. After the meal came the toasts — to the King, to the Queen, to the Governor and Council of Virginia, to a fail- price for Virginia commodities, to the friends of America, and to the ladies. Often it was sunset before the gentlemen left the table.
Music, dancing, riding and cards were the chief amusements of the guests. Many of the homes were provided with harpsichords or with the newly-in- vented "forte-piano," and Nomini Hall contained all the musical instruments known at the time. Danc- ing schools were regularly held, and attendance upon them was at once part of the education and of the pleasure of the young people. Generally a meeting of the school was held fortnightly at the various homes, and the entire school lodged with the host of the occasion. Cards were a favorite amusement, though they were not used as frequently as a North- ern visitor, Fithian, had expected. In addition to these indoor amusements, there were out-of-door events which added much to the enjoyment of life: The hospitable captain of some visiting vessel would invite the leading men and their families aboard and furnish lavish entertainment — it might be boat races, or a great dance, and a splendid dinner was always served. On one such occasion forty-five ladies and sixty gentlemen assembled aboard the Beaufort off Hobbes Hole. The Fredericksburg Fair was likewise a time of general festivity, with its gathering of the aristocracy and its races. Races were also held at the various county courts. Colonel Tayloe's "Yor-
o g
Q
« o . "o
ARISTOCRACY OF NORTHERN NECK. 71
ick" won £500 at a single running, and a similar bet at the Bichmond court created no particular excite- ment. Occasionally, too, the young gentlemen of the community would ride off to a cock pit, where stakes ran high.
The Church in the Social Life.
The church was an important phase of social life. Most of the planters belonged to the Established Church. Many were wardens and vestrymen, and some, "King" Carter for example, built churches at their own expense. On Sunday morning the family coach, with its four or six horses, was brought out, while the less pretentious "chair" and the riding horses were pressed into service to convey the fam- ily and guests to church. Even then the importance of the aristocracy was duly recognized; the rest of the congregation always waited, in early days, until "King" Carter should arrive and enter the church with his retinue to occupy the fourth of that sacred edifice, reserved for himself and his family. In like manner, four leading families of the aristocracy secured permission to build a twenty-foot annex to the church, where they might sit and hear the serv> ice, undisturbed by others. AlLthe leading families had their own pews, which were leased for life and ornamented with the family arms. And if the short sermons did not appeal to the Presbyterian Fithian, who was used to lengthy Princeton discourses, they fully satisfied the aristocrats of the Neck.
In addition to its spiritual function, the Sunday worship served also as a general meeting for busi- ness conferences. The planters generally remained in the church yard discussing the price of tobacco and kindred topics until the church bell rang, and frequently lingered until the clerk left his place and called upon them to enter. This meeting was con-
?2 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
tinued after the service and frequently ended in adjournment to some near-by mansion for dinner. It was doubtless in the church yards on such occa- sions and at the courts that the leading men com- pared views on political questions and made possible their practically unanimous action against Great Britain.
Contrary to accepted tradition, one reads little of quarrels in the vestries and comparatively little of scandals in the pulpit. Perhaps Landon Carter of Sabine Hall gave more uneasiness to the clergy than did any other man. When the Rev. William Kay offended him, he nailed up Kay's church and forbade the minister to enter. With great difficulty Kay's supporters gained entrance through one of the doors, but they were unable to open the other. In conse- quence, Kay preached for more than a year in the open air. On another occasion, Landon Carter was quietly seated in church when he happened to see Reuben Beale, who had married Landon 's daughter Judith much against the wishes of her father. The old man promptly took up his hat, bade everyone an audible good-day and started home afoot, telling his servant to follow with his horses and his prayer- book. Such scenes, however, were the exception. In the main, the church was viewed with becoming respect, its business was transacted with patience and care, its clergy were kindly regarded.
Industry and Education.
It must not be supposed from the foregoing de- scription of social life, that the aristocrats gave themselves up to pleasure-seeking without restraint. With large families, large plantations and large numbers of slaves, they were compelled to be careful in business, and many of them showed no small abil-
i. DRAYTON HALL, ON THE ASHLEY RIVER. 2. PRINGLE RESIDENCE. CHARLESTON.
ARISTOCRACY OF NORTHERN NECK. 73
ity in this direction. Robert Carter of Nomini Hall was perhaps the richest man in the Neck during the period preceding the Revolution, and he had various business enterprises, including a large mill and a biscuit oven for making ship 's biscuit. Through his wife he also had an interest in the Patapsco Iron "Works at Baltimore. Other planters carried on dif- ferent industries; many of them owned ships, some ran mills, and others, including Governor Spotswood and the Washington family, engaged in the iron industry. Considering their extravagant style of living, one is surprised to observe the amount of ready money accumulated by some of these planters. When Thomas Lee 's mansion was burned in 1728-29 he lost £10,000 cash. Robert Carter incidentally mentioned that if he died he would leave his wife £6,000 ready money. "King" Carter was reputed to have left much more in actual money.
The leading planters likewise took pains to pro- vide for the education of their children and to pre- pare them for the serious work of life. Many sent their sons to William and Mary College ; others pre- ferred to have their sons ' education finished in Eng- land, and the names of prominent Northern Neck families are frequent in the registers of Eton, of Oxford and Cambridge, and of the Temples, while those of the Washington brothers appear in the reg- ister of Appleby school. Sometimes young men would enter Princeton, and occasionally one wan- dered to far-off New England. Many planters em- ployed private tutors for their younger children; these tutors were regarded as members of the fam- ily and were given complete control over their charges. Nor were aspiring boys and girls at a loss for reading matter, for the inventories of old estates in the Northern Neck show numerous large libraries
74 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
and but few instances where some books are not listed. Law, medicine, theology, the classics and English literature made up the bulk of these col- lections.
The Decline of the Old System.
This social system reached its maturity from 1750 to 1775, that is, during the period in which the great men of the Northern Neck were maturing. With the Revolution the system collapsed, from causes which may be briefly enumerated. In the first place, the years preceding the Revolution had been rife with extravagance and speculation — against which evils such men as Landon Carter had long protested. This course had seriously crippled many large plant- ers before the Revolution and, had that event not occurred, it is safe to say many planters would have been ruined by their own recklessness. The second influence in the overthrow of the old system was inherent in the Revolution itself — the failure of a foreign market, low money values, inability to mar- ket commodities. A still more potent factor, how- ever, was the abolition of entails and^ thejionsecpienJ; f the largo- patatpg H not unfrequently
happened that a man who had lived on a lavish scale left so many descendants that the shares of each were so small as to preclude any attempt at the old scale of living. The last element in the overthrow of the .old social system wasjjiejiisestablishment of the Church of England^ The EstaBIislied Church, wiHTTfs TcTaimslipon the property of every man, gave strength to the aristocrats who formed its communi- cants, and received strength in turn from their patronage. Once that church was placed on the level with dissenting churches, its followers no longer could boast any spiritual superiority over their neighbors.
ARISTOCRACY OF NORTHERN NECK. 75
The surest evidence of the overthrow of the old order of things is the appearance of new names among the office holders. The smaller land owners who, before the Revolution, had been of no impor- tance, rose rapidly ; they held the offices in the militia, they were justices of the peace, they went to the legislature, they ousted the former undisputed holders of office. In Spottsylvania and in Fairfax counties, the influence of the merchant classes from Fredericksburg and from Alexandria was plainly felt. It is perhaps unjust to say that these new leaders cherished resentment against their aristo- cratic neighbors, but it is manifest that they were determined to claim and to maintain their rights.
From 1790 the decline of the old social aristocracy was rapid. Estates were divided, subdivided and again divided; old family seats were sold, and old names lost their prestige. New families sprang up, who bought the old estates, increased the number of slaves and established a new order of living. It was however, from the old ante-Revolutionary aristoc- racy, not from this post-Revolutionary society that the leading men of the Nineteenth century in the Northern Neck were called. They maintained an open hospitality and a generous style of living in the period prior to the War between the States, but they had neither the fortunes nor the estates of the original aristocracy.
The War between the States definitely brought an end to this second aristocracy and impoverished all alike. Nevertheless, there remain at present some vestiges of the old order of things. A few estates remain in the hands of the descendants of the orig- inal ante-Revolutionary aristocracy and are the cen- tre of the social system of today. One observes, upon close examination, that the old families cling
76 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
together and maintain the traditions, if not the splendors, of their ancestors.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — The source-material for social life in The North- ern Neck is abundant but not generally accessible. The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (Richmond, 1893-1908, Vols. I-XVI), and the William and Mary Quarterly (Williamsburg, 1893- 1909, Vols. I-XVI) contain many documents. In the latter are the diaries of Landon. Carter and James Gordon, residents of the Neck during its period of greatest prosperity. Fithian, Philip Vickors: Journal and Letters, 1767-74 (Princeton, 1900), is most important as the expression of a Northern tutor who remained for more than a year in the family of Councillor Carter of Nomini Hall. The, Journal of a Young Lady of Virginia, 1782 (ed. E. V. Mason, Bal- timore, 1871), is a brief but suggestive narrative by one of the younger members of the Lee family. The Diary of John Harrow er, 1773-76, in The American Historical Review (Vol. VI, pp. 65-107), is also valuable. Of court-records only those of Spottsylvania county, 1721-1800, have been published (ed. by W. A. Crozier, New York, 1905). These are chiefly important for names. The important con- temporary works are: Byrd, William: Writings (ed. John S. Bas- sett, New York, 1901) and especially his Progress to the Mines, 1737; Beverley, Eobert: History of Virginia, 1722; Hsrtwell, Blair and Chilton: Present State of Virginia and The College, 1727 (written 1695-96); Jones, Hugh: Present State of Virginia, 1724; Keith, William: History of Virginia, 1738. Genealogies mentioned may be traced through the excellent Finding list published in The Virginia State Library Bulletin (Vol. I., No. 1).
Important authorities are: Conway, M. D.: Barons of the PatomacTc and The EappahannocJc (New York, 1892), a most un- satisfactory account; Glenn, Thomas: Some Colonial Mansions and Those Who Lived in Them (First Series, Philadelphia, 1899, con- taining an able article by Kate Mason Rowland on "The Carter Fam- ily"); Meade, William: Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1861, a standard authority) ; Pryor, Mrs. R. A.: The Mother of Washington and Her Times (New York, 1903); Slaughter, Philip: History of St. George's Parish (New York, 1847, 2d ed., Richmond, 1890), and History of Truro Parish (ed. E. C. Goodwin, Philadelphia, 1907).
DOUGLAS S. FREEMAN,
Richmond, Va.
THE OLD REGIME IN VIRGINIA. 77
CHAPTER VI. THE OLD REGIME IN VIRGINIA.
Characteristics of the Period.
the first shipload of colonists in Virginia there are said to have been "four carpen- ters, twelve laborers and fifty-four gentle* men,'* and the leader of that adventurous expedition complained in bitterness of spirit of the policy which sent such settlers into the American wilderness. But it did not take him long to learn that no one of the carpenters or laborers could fell more trees in a day than one of his "gentlemen adventurers"; and if he had been endowed with the vision of prophecy he might have taken courage, to see that in the permanence of the race qualities which these men possessed and exhibited, lay the foundations of the greatness which their successors of the same strain were to achieve and illustrate upon the continent of America.
In a democratic age, and among a composite popu- lation, it has become not unfashionable to decry the claims of inherited talents and of transmitted social and political abilities, and to forget the significant saying of the greatest of the English political phi- losophers, that "people will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ances- tors." But the impartial scientist, regardless of political sentiment, vouches for the value of per- sistent and continued race and family character^ istics, and the newly developed law of eugenics pro- claims their tremendous importance in the progress of human events.
78 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
Professor N. S. Shaler, of Harvard University, in 1891, wrote as follows :
"I sought to find a body of troops, whose ancestors had been for many generations upon our soil, and whose ranks were essentially unmixed with foreigners, or those whose forefathers had been but a short time upon this continent. It proved difficult to find in the Northern armies any commands which served the needs of the inquiry which I desired to make. It seemed necessary to consider a force of at least five thousand men in order to avoid the risks which would come from insufficient data. In our Federal army it was the custom to put in the same brigade regiments from different districts, thus commingling commands of pure American blood with those which held a considerable percentage of foreigners, or men of foreign parents. I found in my limited inquiry but one command which satisfied the needs of the investigation, and this was the First Brigade of Kentucky troops in the rebel army. In the begining of the war this brigade was recruited mostly in the slave holding district of Kentucky, its ranks being filled mainly with farmers' sons. It is possible to trace the origin of the men in this command with suf- ficient exactitude by the inspection of the muster rolls. Almost every name upon them belongs to well-known families of English stock, mainly derived from Virginia. It is possible, in a similar way, to prove that with few and unimportant exceptions these soldiers were of ancient American lineage. Speaking generally, we may say that their blood had been upon the soil for a century and a half; that is, they were about five generations removed from the parent country.
"When first recruited, this brigade contained about five thousand men. From the beginning it proved as trustworthy a body of infantry as ever marched or stood in the line of battle. Its military record is too long and too varied to be even summarized here. I will only note one hundred days of its history in the closing stages of its service. May 7, 1864, this brigade, then in the army of Gen. Joseph Johnston, marched out of Dalton, eleven hundred and forty strong, at the be- ginning of the great retreat upon Atlanta before the army of Sher- man. In the subsequent hundred days, or until September 1, the brigade was almost continuously in action or on the march. In this period the men of the command received eighteen hundred and sixty death or hospital wounds, the dead counted as wounds, and but one wound being counted for each visitation of the hospital. At the end of this time there were less than fifty men who had not been wounded during the hundred days. There were two hundred and forty men left for duty and less than ten men deserted.
"A search into the history of warlike exploits has failed to show me any endurance of the worst trials of war surpassing this. We must remember that the men of this command were at each stage of their retreat going farther from their firesides. It is easy for men to bear great trials under circumstances of victory. Soldiers of ordinary goodness will stand several defeats; but to endure the despair which such adverse conditions bring, for a hundred days, de- mands a moral and physical patience, which, so far as I have learned, has never been excelled in any other army."*
* Nature and Man in America. (New York, 1891, p. 275.)
THE OLD REGIME IN VIRGINIA. 79
These men were the ultimate product of the old regime in Virginia. They were primarily of gentle blood, belonging * ' to well known families of English stock, mainly derived from Virginia." They were the final result of social and economic conditions that had concurred with their racial permanence to create in them a superlative and perhaps unex- ampled measure of moral and physical stamina.
In one of Governor Spotswood's published letters he complained that the Council in Virginia included in its ten members six who were related to Mr. Ludwell ; and on March 9, 1713, he wrote :
' ' The greater part of the present Council are related to the Family
"of the Burwells. * * * If Mr. Bassett and Mr. Berkeley should
take their places, there will be no less than seven so near related that
they will go off the Bencli whenever a Cause of the Burwells come
to be tryed."
These declarations of family ascendancy serve to exemplify and to illustrate the social and political conditions of the colony at the time when they were made ; and they were conditions which had continued and developed with a steady persistence practically from the period of Smith's first gentlemen adven- turers. The structure of society and of government alike had, in the hundred years since the settlement at Jamestown, been firmly secured upon the founda- tions of the family. The privileged class, as it then existed, was composed almost exclusively of the large landed proprietors of the river valleys, who erected stately mansions upon their demesnes, of an archi- tectural type so distinctive and so characteristic as still to remain an impressive feature of their con- temporary civilization, and to give a name to the style which they represent. These houses were fin- ished and furnished with a taste and luxuriousness which the wealth of their owners enabled them to gratify ; and the marble mantelpieces, and mahogany
80 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
doors and panels, and the costly and beautiful furniture of chairs, tables, sideboards, and bed- steads of the period, remain to proclaim the edu- cated eclecticism and the ample means that pro- duced them. The growth of the tobacco trade, a larger source of wealth than might even have been the discovery of the gold of which the earlier adven- turers dreamed, had already assumed in Spots- wood's time vast and significant proportions; and the tobacco ships from Glasgow and Whitehaven and London whitened with their sails the river ways of the James, the York and the Potomac at the period in which he wrote. The owners of the Vir- ginia river low grounds were the owners, too, of hordes of African slaves, and from the one, by the labor of the other, was produced the nicotian plant, whose propagation was the source of colonial wealth and of social ease.
Naturally, the planters found at once the most agreeable and most practical outlet for their talents and energies, and a gratification of their social instincts, in holding office and directing public affairs under the colonial government. The natural tend- ency of aristocratic superiority, amplified in impor- tance by large possessions, and characterized by such a segregation as sprung from a residence in country districts, was to develop individual courage, self-reliance, and self-esteem and a steady adherence to well grounded principles ; and these qualities com- bined in their possessors to urge them in the direc- tion of what has been regarded from the beginnings of history as the most exalted of human pursuits, the art and practise of government.
The exercise of governmental power produced in the colonial Virginian a characteristic conservatism. With the development of a permanent social and political status, the desire of novelty and of change
THE OLD REGIME IN VIRGINIA. 81
ceased to exist; and the earlier spirit of adven- ture in its larger sense disappeared. The aviditas novarum rerum, which the Latin writers characterize as synonymous with revolution, had no foothold in. the colony; and what is known in history as the American Revolution sprang less from the desire \ for political and social change in the Virginians than from that proud sense of a right of local self-gov- ernment, and that resentment of alien interference with domestic conditions, which were distinctive of their descendants in 1860.
The Council and the House of Burgesses afforded arenas for the exhibition of talents, and for the illustration of social position, no less than for the exercise of political power; while the more imme- diately local offices were sought and held by the gentry of the colony, not only for their frequently large emoluments, but also for the influence and importance which accompanied their possession. The Established Church constituted a conspicuous feature of the civil government, for the vestry was the local legislative body, and the office of vestry- man was consequently one of dignity and corre- sponding power. A position on the magisterial bench, which made the County Court, was equally important; while the clerkships of the counties, on account of their fees and perquisites, were regarded as highly desirable public places by the most promi- nent representatives of the powerful families.
Contiguity of rural residence, and the exclusive- ness of social relations, which, while maintaining a constant and overflowing hospitality to high and low alike, preserved at the same time an impassable social boundary, served at once to establish and delimit the social contact. In consequence, the fami- lies of the great land owners of the river sections
82 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
had already become in the first half of the Eighteenth century more or less immediately connected with and related to each other by consanguinity and affinity, and had acquired a dominant control in the government, as in the social life, and had established themselves as the privileged class of the colony; while from its earliest periods down to the final over- throw and destruction of the old regime, a distin- guishing mark of this dominant class in Virginia was the mutual interest of its members in the wel- fare of their relatives and connections, whose politi- cal and personal advancement each member of the coterie sought to aid as opportunity offered itself.
The unprivileged class, consisting of small farm- ers with comparatively few slaves, and the descend- ants of workmen, shopkeepers, artisans and * ' redemptioners, " were chiefly set apart from the more powerful class by their lack of wealth, and in a majority of instances by their lack of education and of culture. The slaves themselves, being chat- tels, may not be counted as constituting any portion of the existing social organization, save as the most important cornerstone on which it was established.
About this society, unique in history as having its basic support in African slavery, and as being prac- tically a republican government administered by white men, grew up in the golden period of the two decades preceding the Revolution, a refinement and ease of life, and a philosophical comprehension of government, which were not excelled by those that characterized the then ruling classes in England, with whom these colonial Virginians had maintained the ties and associations of a common origin, a common language and literature, and a common government.
Many of the young aristocrats of the new world
THE OLD REGIME IN VIRGINIA. 83
were educated at Oxford and Cambridge, and brought back with them, on their return from the mother country, a renewed and revivified knowledge of its society and of its intellectual life, and an even more exalted pride in its history and traditions than they had taken with them. Those who remained in Virginia grew up under the aristocratic political, social and religious influences of the venerable foundation of William and Mary College, which had continued from its early beginnings to be the influences of England. Upon the walls of the ma- jestic mansions that adorned the banks of the Poto- mac, the Rappahannock, the York and the James rivers, hung the portraits and pictures of preceding generations, painted by the great artists of Eng- land. On the shelves of their libraries, many of which were large and well selected, were the mas- terpieces in prose and poetry of the great English writers. The very clothes which the owners of these mansions and their wives and daughters wore were English made; the silver plate, much of which bore the heraldic symbols that the family which possessed them had been entitled by law to use in the old country, and which adorned their sideboards and tables, was the product of English workmanship; their carriages, chaises and chairs came from Eng- land ; their houses were furnished and equipped from the mother country; and their most delicate viands, and their finest wines and liquors were similarly imported thence.
The colonial Virginian of the latter half of the Eighteenth century was essentially English and per- meated with all the Englishman's pride of race, his conservatism, and his genius for government, yet subject to the modifications of a social environment which knew no ranks or titles of nobility, and to
84 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
physical influences of climate and soil, which differ- entiated it from that of the home country. With these English instincts and inheritances was mingled in him a certain Gallic capacity for enjoyment, that may have sprung in equal parts from the character of his sports and recreations, and from the brilliant and sparkling atmosphere and the more rarefied air of his new and sunnier land.
The proverbial Virginia hospitality had its incep- tion in the ease of existence that succeeded the earlier hardships of the adventurers, and the pleas- ures of life which adorned that hospitality were enjoyed by their possessors in their fullest measure. Music and dancing lent lightness to the domestic duties, while at the colonial capital of Williamsburg the assembly balls, and the occasional appearances at the theatre of companies of English actors, gave diversion to the people of fashion and prominence who gathered there during the sessions of the House of Burgesses, or in attendance upon the glittering courts of the royal governors.
Among the men, horse racing and the breeding of fine animals were pursuits of both interest and profit; and hunting and fishing and various other outdoor sports stamped the hall-mark of distinction upon the good rider, the accurate shot and the accus- tomed navigator and woodsman. Out of these amusements and avocations sprung the qualities and characteristics which, upon the approach of war, made of the Virginians soldiers who only lacked the technical discipline of military instruction and of brief experience to encounter with success the regiments of the finest trained soldiery of the world.
But, beyond all else, the occupation by the colonial planter of the position of master and ruler over his slaves had enlarged and intensified the natural and
THE OLD KEGIME IN VIRGINIA. 85
inherited tendencies and capacities to govern, which had come to him with the strain of his English descent. By virtue of his origin, his education, his dominance of an inferior and subject race, he was from the beginning no less a ruler, through the necessities and circumstances of his environment, than by the inclinations of his blood and his study of the teachings and examples of history. Thus it befell that the colony, being never without negro slavery, was never destitute of a statesmanship of ability and distinction; and when at last war arose on the political horizon, its earliest fires disclosed figures in Virginia that loomed colossal in its lurid light. From the earlier ranks of the old regime appeared leaders, who were such by the natural and inevitable evolution of their racial, social, political and economic antecedents. The Virginia family, sprung of a pure English strain, fostered upon Eng- lish inheritances and traditions, and drawing its very sap and essential vigor from English life, pos- sessing at the same time the larger economic sub- strata of rich and abundant lan'ds, and a negro slave population, and fulfilled with a sense of personal and political freedom that sprung out of laws of their own making, unhampered also by the restrain- ing influences of artificially created rank and caste, had produced, at the dawn of the Revolution, a race of men who, judged by its individual representatives, have been excelled in no country for their extraordi- nary ability as statesmen and empire builders.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, the Randolphs, John Marshall, the Lees, James Madison, the Harrisons, and many others of scarcely less fame, were the illustrators and orna- ments of the genius and glory of their race, that had grown up and developed in a congenial region upon
86 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
the foundations of English pedigrees, the amplifica tion of family power, and the ownership of fertile land and negro slaves. They were a race who have been truthfully and dispassionately described by one of the clearest visioned and best informed of modern American historians as "simple and whole- some in tastes, dignified in bearing, courteous and hearty in manner, but proud and sensitive in spirit, and instinctively resentful of all unwarranted inter- ference with their rights."*
The colonial Virginians had had secured to them, in the first charter of the colony, "the privileges, franchises and immunities of native born English- men forever;" and the spirit of civil liberty had burned in them with a bright and flaming light from the beginning. Out of this quenchless spirit of indi- vidual and political freedom grew the Revolution; and with its successful termination under the leader- ship of a Virginian, and upon Virginia soil, came such a change in political thought and political con- ditions as might well have been expected to over- throw the existing social status, and thereby to bring about a total subversion of the order of the state. i^Entail and primogeniture were abolished, and a deadly blow to the continued permanency of aristo- cratic family pride and power, and perpetuated family wealth, seemed visible in their abolition. The Established Church was destroyed, and religious freedom was founded upon statute, whereby the inter-relation of society and government appeared to have been wounded in one of the closest joints of its armor. But, after all, the democratic acclaim of "liberty, equality, fraternity," illustrated only by a new battle-cry the old unfaltering Virginian spirit of personal and civil liberty. The social status
^— Jt^obcrt E. Lee, by Philip Alexander Bruce. (Philadelphia, 1907, Ch. I.)
THE OLD REGIME IX VIRGINIA. 87
remained unchanged, in spite of these tremendous innovations, save in so far as by the progressive subdivision of ownership in slaves and lands due to the development of population, and by the cessation of slave importations, and by the going forth of sons and daughters from the river and tidewater sections to settle new regions, the aristocratic power was diluted and dissipated. But the old governmental forces still predominated; the English influences continued to prevail ; and African slavery persisted. The significant characteristics of personal honor, of respect for woman, of reverence for religion, of individual courtesy, of consideration for the weak and the helpless, and of passionate devotion to the right of local self government, to ''the little pla- toon," which Mr. Burke characterizes as the very beginning of constitutional freedom, survived what seemed to be a mighty overthrow of essential con- ditions. Upon these things, and upon the continu- ance of the rural life, and of the institution of slav- ery, the old regime was founded, and so continued.
Slavery and the Old Regime.
The preamble to the first state constitution of Virginia, adopted on the 29th of June, 1776, recited that the king of Great Britain had, among other outrages, prompted ''our negroes to rise in arms among us, those very negroes whom by an inhuman use of his prerogative he had refused us permission to exclude by law"; and Jefferson sought to write the same idea into the Declaration of Independence, but was prevented. Virginia soon thereafter pro- hibited the importation of slaves into her borders, and a number of futile efforts were attempted in the General Assembly to procure the abolition of slavery as a social institution. With its persistence
88 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
and diffusion the aristocratic form and significance of government continued; and it was not until the constitutional convention of 1829-30, which was called to amend the state constitution of 1776, with especial reference to the basis of legislative repre- sentation, that the irrepressible conflict between slaveholder and non-slaveholder in the common- wealth began. The question that the convention was required to settle was whether the basis of rep- resentation should be white, or what was known as that of the Federal numbers, namely, two-fifths slave and three-fifths white. The advocates of either side were so evenly divided in the convention upon this fundamental issue as to be unable to determine it decisively for one plan or the other ; and the vexed question was only disposed of by a compromise which gave the victory to neither. The old regime opposed the calling of the convention, and made a desperate resistance in it to the proposed change, anticipating from its possible decision, and with no unreasonable apprehension, a destruction of society as it was organized, and a consequent loss of polit- ical power. But with the compromise adjustment of the most serious issue before the convention, slavery still continued to exert its potent influence as a political factor; and the government remained appointive in the selection of all officials, save mem- bers of the General Assembly, through the General Assembly itself; and thus hardly less aristocratic than it had been before. The governor, the judges and most of the local officials were elected by the legislature, in which, in spite of the change in the basis of representation, the aristocratic element, illustrating the aristocratic talent, continued to con- trol; and it was not until the convention of 1850, in the decade preceding that of the final destruction
THE OLD REGIME IX VIRGINIA. 89
of slavery, that the people were permitted to vote directly for the officials who conducted their government.
It may not be amiss to say here, without going into the merits and demerits of slavery as a social, economic and political institution, that there were many men and women of the old regime in Vir- ginia who would have been glad to procure its aboli- tion, but who were confronted always with a realiza- tion of the inevitable consequences of such a step, and were likewise unable to find a way. They saw" in emancipation, in whatever manner, the destruc- tion of vast accumulated wealth, and the consequent loss of individual power, both social and political. They saw in it the inability of the land owner to control and direct the labor without which his fer- tile acres were valueless. They saw in it the de- struction of the existing social order that had been conserved with moderation and self-restraint, from the very beginning of that order. They saw in it, upon the testimony of recorded human experience, the impossibility of the two races, one naturally inferior to the other, living together in the same country upon a plane of either social or political equality. They were staggered at the contempla- tion of the question. Jefferson procured the enact- ment of a statute providing for the emancipation of the slave by his owner, but with the significant pro- vision that he must get out of the commonwealth within a year thereafter. Jefferson, John Randolph of Roanoke, Gen. Robert E. Lee, and others of the old regime, provided in the testamentay dispositions of their estates, or otherwise, for the emancipa- tion of their slaves, ^ut slavery persisted, be- cause it was so closely a part of the mother society in which it had been impregnated and with whose
90 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
life it was so inevitably and inseparably bound up, that it could only be ripped out, as it was ripped out at last, untimely, and by the operation called "Caesarian"; and it continued, too, because the slave-owners resented the injustice of any outside interference with it as violative of the constitutional compact that had recognized it from the beginning of the government.
In the meantime the social life of the common- wealth continued to reflect, though with diminished luxury and waning physical splendor, that of the heyday of the colony. The slave-holding descend- ants of the river planters, increasing in numbers, gradually subdivided the lands and negroes, or set- tled newer portions of the state; and continued the rural existence of their forefathers, though in a more modest fashion. To the physical activities which the men of the colony had exercised they now added the more disciplinary one, consequent upon their experience of war, of a highly organized state militia, in which the offices of command were gen- erally apportioned among the privileged class, and out of which grew a citizen soldiery that proved itself in a marked degree efficient in all wars subse- quent to that of the Revolution.
The Home Circle.
In the home circle after the Revolution, the earlier elegancies and refinements of the colonial household, fostered by a more or less exclusive social inter- course, by habitual association with earlier and con- temporaneous English influences, and by the pos- session of ample wealth, continued unchanged, save in the measure of their exercise. The mistress of the house was still the presiding genius of the plan- tation and of the slave population, whose food, cloth-
THE OLD REGIME IX VIRGINIA. 91
ing and medicines she superintended, and whose burdens of sickness, sorrow and old age she alle- viated with her personal presence and attention, as her colonial grandmothers and great-grandmothers had done before her among greater acres and more numerous slaves. The daughters of the house grew up with a vivid sense of their future responsibilities as mistresses ; and were generally liberally educated in literature and the domestic arts in their own homes, or amid home surroundings. Mothers and daughters alike, under the benign influences of the respectful consideration and tender regard which they received at the hands of their husbands, sons and brothers, and all the men of their rank and sta- tion, illustrated in their highest type the courage, the self-reliance, the virtue and the womanliness, which are the sex's noblest and most beautiful
ornaments. J
Education up to the time of the War between the States remained characteristic of the social and political environment. The sons of the privileged class had constituted a large majority of the stu- dents of William and Mary College since its founda- tion in 1692; and the catalogues of the college con- stitute a bede-roll of the names of the great planters and slave owners. From the time of its establish- ment in 1825 by Mr. Jefferson, down to 1860, the University of Virginia, conspicuously democratic in its organization and in the avowed purpose of its foundation, and nominally the apex of a state sys- tem of popular education, remained, nevertheless, in its administration, an educational institution scarcely less aristocratic in its character than was Oxford itself, while the whole subordinate system, consist- ing for the most part of classical schools and col- leges conducted largely by private enterprise, was
92 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
by no means democratic in the sense that it fur- nished free opportunity of instruction to the masses. But withal, as Disraeli said of the English Con- stitution, that "within its dominion power was a privilege within the reach of all who struggled to attain it," it was the boast of the privileged class in Virginia that no youth of parts, without influence or fortune, need suffer for the lack of educational advantages, since his merits were always recognized and he was aided in his ambition by those who were powerful to aid. This condition, however, was not an acceptable one to those who constituted the bene- ficiary class; and it is significant that there was no more potent agency in arousing the temper of the non-slave-holders' section of the Union against slav- ery, in the decade prior to 1860, than a published work by a man of this class, which presented with tremendous effect, though often with savage vin- dictiveness and unfounded assertion, the evil of slavery in its denial of opportunity to those who were not the owners of slaves.
Characteristics of the Men and Women of the Old Regime.
As a natural result of the social and political fabric constituting the old regime in Virginia, its energies continued to be largely expended in the study and practice of politics and of government. Men sought the professional careers which prom- ised either political or social preferment; and what are now called the mechanic and industrial arts were almost unknown to those who spent their lives upon the soil, which produced their prominence and power. Literature, save of a political or forensic character, had comparatively little of either root or blossom ; and the favorite profession of the law was
MARTHA WASHINGTON.
THE OLD REGIME IX VIRGINIA. 93
thus especially attractive, because it was the step- ping-stone to the higher profession of politics.
But of the accomplishments of the old regime in this, its chosen field, the record, full to overflowing, is perhaps unparalleled in the pages of modern history. The men of the old regime in Virginia founded a colony which was the cradle of the Bepub- lic. They formulated and established the first writ- ten constitution of republican government known to the world. They were the largest factors in estab- lishing the independence of the American colonies, and in determining the character and tendencies of their national association as states. They con- ducted and administered the national government from its inception through its earlier career, enact- ing its legislation, interpreting its laws, and direct- ing their execution; they furnished the country's greatest leaders in war; they opened up the North- west Territory, which they had bestowed upon the national government in the most splendid and unself- ish gift of which record is made in political history ; they settled the valley of the Mississippi Eiver, and the great Southwest, and added the Louisiana Ter- ritory and Texas to the Union; and they led the armies of their section with unsurpassed courage and unexcelled ability in the most tremendous con- flict of modern times, and against overwhelming odds.
In the social life they developed and exemplified in a new country and amid adverse conditions the refined and yet vigorous qualities of an old world civilization that was the culmination of the growth of a thousand years; and they kept, with all its elegancies and refinements, the sturdiness and noble independence of thought and conduct which are not always and everywhere their accompaniments.
94 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
They bore themselves with the gentleness and kind- liness, which have always illustrated the birth and breeding of long and aristocratic descent, towards those who, in the economy of their society, were their inferiors; and they exercised towards their slaves, with singularly few exceptions, a tenderness of treatment that has remained incomprehensible to the alien or hostile mind.
Fading, towards the end, in the glowing colors of its earlier baronial splendor, yet tenacious to the last of its ingrained principles and fundamental tra- ditions, the old regime was throughout its existence wholly lacking in that effeminacy which, in the aristocratic circles of the ancien regime of France, made life at last little more than a graceful parade of drawing-room puppets, exhibiting themselves according to established rules and recognized models, with a self-consciousness that emphasized its shallowness.
These Virginians possessed the robust and virile characteristics of earnestness and of unbending inde- pendence, and such capacity of genuine enjoyment as is natural to a happy existence in the open air and the sunshine. The career of the courtier or of the fickle follower of fashion had no place at any time in their existence. To them duty appealed as one of the most insistent of human virtues, and the sense of responsibility for their conduct and bear- ing in the positions which they filled was commen- surate with their lofty personal, and intellectual in- tegrity. Virtue, unselfishness, domesticity, courage, dignity, were the qualities of the women of the col- ony and the commonwealth. "That chastity of honor which felt a stain like a wound," love of per- sonal and civil liberty, love of home, a faith in cour- age and truth as constituting the foundations of
DOLLY MADISON.
THE OLD REGIME IN VIRGINIA. 95
character, were the distinguishing marks of the men of the old regime. In both women and men, un- touched as they were by infusion of the blood of any alien race, and whose proud boast was that they sprung immaculate from the people of the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and who remained uncorrupted by the arrogant presence and the gilded assumptions of any nouveaux riches, and uninflu- enced by new standards of ethics or of aspirations, burned and glowed, above all other fervors the splendid fire of a passionate devotion to Virginia.
The old regime perished utterly with the destruc- tion, in 1861-1865, of the social fabric upon which it was founded; and the passing of it was such a death as, in spite of time-servers and sycophants, made a mighty hiatus in civilization. A social order perished with it, such as the world is not likely to see again, nor as the envy and malignity of its ene- mies will ever cease to decry. But the ultimate prevalence of truth shall surely write its true story in the end.
It has been not inaptly said that the processes and results of the War between the States were analogous to those through which democratic Athens imposed popular government upon the aristocratic cities of Greece, which she subdued to her sway ; and it is, at all events, certain that with the conclusion of the war came the elimination of aristocratic institu- tions from America.
Yet the record shall prove beyond cavil for the ultimate consideration of posterity that the regime which had given to the people of Virginia in colony and commonwealth a wise, economical, patriotic, honest, conservative and constitutional government, and had evolved a social system that in the character of ita membership has been unexcelled for virtue,
96 THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
integrity and ability in the story of modern civili- zation, may well be claimed to have accomplished larger and more significant results for human- ity than are to be discovered in a careful study of the histories of many of the most self-vaunting democracies.
Of the men and women of the old regime it may be said, beyond gainsaying or refutation, that they observed fidelity, they respected law, and they upheld freedom, civil and religious, according to the spirit of the great charters that were intended to perpetu- ate both; while in all that constitutes the greatness of great states they made Virginia super-eminent above her contemporary civil communities, and at the very least the equal of any others that have heretofore existed upon the face of the whole earth.
BIBLIOGRAPHY — Bruce, Philip A.: Social Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century (1907) and Eobert E. Lee (1907); Hayden, Horace E.: Virginia Genealogies; Helper, Hinton A.: The Impend- ing Crisis; Keith, Charles P.: The Ancestry of Benjamin Harrison (1892); Lunt, George: Origin of the Late War (1866); Page, Thomaa Nelson: The Old South (1892); Shaler, N. S.: Nature and Man in America (1891); The Journal of Philip Vickers Fithian; The Jour- nal of a Young Lady of Virginia; Virginia Historical Magasine; William and Mary College Quarterly; Debates of the Virginia Con- vention of 1829-30.
AEMISTEAD C. GORDON,
Rector of the University of Virginia; author of Congressional Currency; A Virginian of the Old School; etc.
PART II.
THE RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH
CHAPTER I. THE ENGLISH IN THE SOUTH.
I. COLONIAL. Seventeenth Century.
HE history of the English people in the South, as well as in America, begins with the settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, of one hundred and forty-three men who came in three small ships sent out by a London mercantile company under Captain Chris- topher Newport. Over half of these men were of good blood ; the rest were, for the most part, a thrift- less set of adventurers. But under capable leaders like Captain John Smith, Lord Delaware, Sir Thomas Dale and Sir Thomas Gates, the colonists, reinforced by successive immigrations, steadily built up new plantations and a prosperous trade. By 1619 the colony of Virginia had become, in part at least, a democracy, for in that year an assembly of representatives from the various plantations was chosen to sit with the Governor's Council and to have a voice in making the laws. This same year is also memorable because of the landing of a Dutch man-of-war with twenty negro slaves aboard, who
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98 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
were sold to the colonists. This was the insignificant beginning of radical changes in the economic and social conditions of the English race in the southern part of North America.
In 1624 Virginia became a royal province and remained such, with variations to suit the Common- wealth period in England, until the American Revo- lution. During the quarrel between the Eoyalists and the Puritans in the mother country, ending in civil war and the Protectorate, Virginia became a refuge for large numbers of English Cavaliers. So great, indeed, was this Cavalier influx that between 1650 and 1670 the population of Virginia increased from 15,000 to 40,000. The population of the colony, purely English except for an infusion of Huguenot blood through DeEichebourg's settlement in 1699, had by the beginning of the Eighteenth century reached 100,000, of whom 40,000 were negroes ; agri- culture had steadily prospered, a college had been founded (1693) at Williamsburg, the new capital, and "the germ of popular government had grown into an established system, jealously watched by the colonies."
Next in time and historical importance as an Eng- lish colony in the South is Maryland, topographic- ally similar to Virginia and, like Virginia, settled by colonists direct from England. With Leonard Calvert, brother of Cecilius Calvert, Lord Balti- more, who had a royal charter for the region be- tween the Potomac Eiver and the southern boundary of the Plymouth Colony, came two hundred colonists. These settled near the mouth of the Potomac, naming the place St. Mary's. Of the two hundred Englishmen twenty were " gentlemen" and the others laborers and mechanics; some of them were Protestants, but probably a large majority were Roman Catholics, the faith of Baltimore, one of
THE ENGLISH IN THE SOUTH. 99
whose motives in seeking the new world had been to escape religious persecution. The Virginians, as might be supposed, objected to the proximity of rival colonists, partly on religious, but mainly on industrial grounds, for the followers of Calvert pro- posed to cultivate tobacco, Virginia's chief product.
Baltimore's colonists were, for the most part, thoroughly capable men, thrifty, religiously toler- ant, and friendly towards the Indians. The relig- ious tolerance of Maryland, indeed, attracted from various lands those who were suffering for their faith, especially Quakers and Catholics ; but in 1691, when Maryland became a royal province, the Church of England was established, and thereafter dissent- ers were merely tolerated while Catholics were ac- tually punished. In the main, however, Maryland was more tolerant to the various sects than her southern neighbor. While she had come to resemble Virginia in government and society, having an agri- cultural population with tendencies toward a landed aristocracy, this resemblance did not go very deep, for the population of Maryland lacked both creedal and social homogeneity. The slave system in Mary- land was modified by climate and by the nature of the immigrants, a majority of whom were indus- trious men of moderate means without Cavalier in- stincts ; landed estates were therefore smaller, there was a greater variety of industries, and there was more free labor. This latter condition meant the existence of a class between the large landowner and the manual laborer, a class very small in Virginia. By the end of the Seventeenth century the popula- tion, almost entirely English, was about 35,000, one- third of whom were negroes.
The earliest permanent settlement in that rather vague region lying between Virginia and Spanish Florida was made in 1653 by Roger Greene and a
100 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
band of Dissenters from Virginia, between the Chowan and Boanoke rivers, and named Albemarle. Following Greene's colony came many other Vir- ginians, impelled partly by love of adventure and partly by a desire for religious freedom. In 1664 Sir John Yeamans, a wealthy planter of Cavalier ancestry, brought a number of West Indian colo- nists of English origin and settled on the Cape Fear Eiver, the district soon becoming known as Claren- don. Around these two centres, Albemarle in the north and Clarendon in the south, may be traced the beginnings of the present states of North and South Carolina. The real beginning of the English occu- pation of this region, however, was the granting by Charles II., in 1663, of the land to certain of his favorites as Lords Proprietors.
During the administration of Governor Stephens immigrants of English race were attracted from the Bermudas, Bahamas, New England and Virginia, some of whom were unfit material. There followed a period of unrest in the Albemarle Colony during which William Sayle, a Puritan from Bermuda, began building a village at the junction of the Ashley and Cooper rivers which developed into the present city of Charleston. Thus by 1670 there were three settlements of English-speaking people in the Carolinas : Albemarle on the Virginia border, Clar- endon on Cape Fear Eiver, and the Ashley Eiver ( Charleston ) settlement.
For the next two decades the northern colony of Albemarle was neglected by the proprietaries as being disorderly and generally less promising than the two southern colonies, which were substantially and regularly aided by the English Lords Propri- etors. In 1691 the two colonies were united into one province, religious toleration prevailed, and mate- rial prosperity followed. Perhaps even more than
THE ENGLISH IN THE SOUTH. 101
Virginia and Maryland the Carolinas illustrate the principle of local self-government. "Nowhere," says Thwaites, "does the innate determination of the Anglo-Saxon to control his own political des- tiny more strikingly appear."
Eighteenth Century.
In 1733 James Oglethorpe, a member of Parlia- ment and a former army officer, brought over a com- pany of settlers chosen from thirty-five families carefully selected, and founded the city of Savan- nah. The new colony, nominally occupying the old Carolina claim between the Savannah and St. John's rivers, was to be "an asylum for the oppressed," where the imprisoned debtors of England might have a fresh start and where the religiously perse- cuted might be free. By the year 1742 the English under Oglethorpe had completely triumphed over their Spanish neighbors to the south and west. After Oglethorpe returned to England in 1743 a period of discontent among the English element in the population followed, though the Germans and Scotch, who had come over some years before in considerable numbers, were satisfied and thrifty. In 1752 Georgia became a royal province, somewhat resembling Virginia in the prevalence of plantation over town life, though colonial Georgia was essen- tially a frontier community.
The history of the Southern colonies from the be- ginning of the Eighteenth century to the Eevolution is mostly a series of contests between legislative assemblies and royal governors, and between the adherents of the Established Church and the dis- senters, revealing the liberty-loving Anglo-Saxon. There were, moreover, frequent local quarrels, often of a political nature, — for the old Southerner was a born politician, — there were Indian wars and
102 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
forays against the French and Spanish, traditional enemies of their ancestors, and there were disputes with England about trade regulations. In spite of all these, however, the growth in population was steady ; there was a fairly continuous stream of im- migration from England and the continent of Eu- rope. In the South the English population was recruited from other races even more than in early New England. To trace this English element in the population of the South and to outline some of its most important achievements in the building of the American Nation is the main purpose of this sketch.
Until the end of the Seventeenth century the pop- ulation of Tidewater Virginia (the cradle of the nation) was almost purely English. There was, in- deed, at the very beginning of the Eighteenth cen- tury a slight infusion of French blood from the Huguenot immigration, but this hardly counted. The native English element in Virginia was made up of three classes: the gentry or upper class, descended in the main from the Cavaliers who came over in large numbers from 1649 to 1670, though it must be remembered that the term ''Cavalier" repre- sented a political rather than a social distinction; the middle class of small farmers and merchants; and the large class of indentured white servants varying all the way from political refugees to kid- napped paupers and convicts. Many of this last class, commonly known as " redemptioners, ' ' rose by industry and talent to be owners of plantations or overseers on large estates, but the leading fam- ilies of Virginia and Maryland, as well as the repre- sentative families of New England, "were not de- scended from convicts or from indented servants of any sort."
The Carolinas were peopled very largely from Virginia. This is notably true of North Carolina,
THE ENGLISH IN THE SOUTH. 103
which grew out of the original Albemarle Colony. Many of the early settlers of North Carolina be- longed to the shiftless and discontented class of whites who from time to time emigrated into the frontier regions south of Virginia. In fact, North Carolina soon became a home for the honorable poor of Virginia as well as a refuge for criminals of the indentured servant class. From this lower element in the English population of the colonies came the 1 'poor white trash," which, scattered over the South to-day, particularly in the wilder regions of coun- try, continue shiftless and degenerate. These poor whites were gradually pushed southwestward by the more orderly and thrifty settlers, then westward, passing through Tennessee on towards Arkansas and southern Missouri; another migration went to Georgia and the Gulf states, while others remained on the borders of South Carolina and in the moun- tains of western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee and Kentucky.
While the population of North Carolina was es- sentially homogeneous * — the German and Scotch- Irish element being relatively small, — South Caro- lina was far more cosmopolitan. Although many Cavaliers came to the two settlements on the Cape Fear and Ashley rivers, the Huguenots, the English dissenters, the Welsh and the Scotch Presbyterians made the complexion of South Carolina far more Puritan than that of Virginia. About one-fifth of the people belonged to the Established Church, and the unit of legislative representation was the parish, of as purely English origin as the Virginia county unit. The population of South Carolina was pre- dominantly urban, while that of Virginia was pre- vailingly rural. Like Virginia, South Carolina had constant communication with England; this caused a constant influx of English immigrants and made
104 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
the civilization essentially English from Massachu- setts to Florida, though the strip was nowhere more than 150 miles wide. Moreover, it was the custom, both in Virginia and in South Carolina, for wealthy planters to send their children to England or to the Continent to be educated. It accordingly happened that the bonds between the Southern English col- onies and the mother country were even closer than those between the Northern colonies and England.
Georgia was first peopled direct from England, but soon German Protestants and Scotch Highland- ers came over in large numbers ; these, together with some New England Puritans who founded the town of Sunbury, somewhat modified the economic and religious conditions of the colony. By 1770 the pop- ulation of Georgia was 50,000, half of whom were negroes. Besides the large planters gathered about Savannah — for Georgia's landed aristocracy was mostly in that region — there were in the western and northern parts large numbers of low whites who had come across from Virginia and the Carolinas— • the upper and lower English strata.
From the preceding sketch it is evident that the English Cavalier element in the population of the colonial South was, with few exceptions, limited to the shores of Chesapeake Bay; that a majority of the people in Maryland were Puritans ; that Puritan influence controlled South Carolina; that descend- ants of redemptioners or indentured servants of one condition or another pushed westward and south- westward. Tidewater Virginia from the Chesa- peake to the Blue Ridge was English, and much of the social and political renown of colonial and na- tional Virginia is the achievement of men of prom- inent English ancestry. The march westward and southward of the English of the three classes already defined must now be followed.
THE ENGLISH IN THE SOUTH. 105
In 1716 Governor Spottswood of Virginia made an expedition across the Blue Eidge. As yet no one from eastern Virginia had penetrated into the Shenandoah Valley. Spottswood formally took pos- session of this region in the name of the English King, and then returned to Williamsburg. Nothing came of this desire to occupy the region beyond the mountains until the administration of Governor Gooch, like Spottswood a Scotchman, who about 1730 began to welcome to the Shenandoah Valley two movements of Scotch-Irish, one from Pennsylvania and the other from their landing place, Charleston, S. C. These sturdy settlers, mostly descended from prosperous yeomen and artisans of the Presbyterian faith, came originally from Ulster, Ireland, where, over a century before, James I. had formed a colony of North English and Scotch Protestants. The Scotch-Irish were therefore part English, the real Irish admixture being very slight. These Scotch- English spread in successive immigrations over what is now West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennes- see. They were democratic in political, social and religious ideals as opposed to the Cavalier, Epis- copal and aristocratic ideals of the purely English society of eastern Virginia.
There were, however, a few English in the north- ern end of the Shenandoah Valley, descended from settlers in the region originally held under a pro- prietary claim by Lord Culpepper and owned later by Lord Fairfax. From this colony near the present town of Winchester the English spread down the Shenandoah Valley. Young George Washington was engaged by Fairfax to survey his frontier estates. This was the beginning of the westward advance of the English which was to bring on the conflict be- tween the English and the French for the possession of the Great West.
106 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
As a result of the French and Indian War, the ostensible object of which was the Ohio country, England came to own (1763) all the French posses- sions east of the Mississippi Eiver except the little tract of land near the mouth of the river on which was the town of New Orleans. About the same time the English acquired the two provinces of Florida from the Spanish in exchange for Havana ; Georgia was enlarged south to St. Mary's Eiver and west to the Mississippi. The other Southern colonies, nominally extending to that river, had an abundance of territory for establishing new settlements. Set- tlers began to move westward into the present region of Kentucky and eastern Tennessee. Vir- ginia owned the Kentucky territory, North Carolina owned Tennessee ; South Carolina ceded her narrow western strip of land to the national government in 1787. This was the territorial situation when the new republic began its independent history in 1789.
Meanwhile immigration into the western and southwestern country steadily increased. The land- hunger of the Saxon, the passion for winning the West, drove these Anglo-Americans beyond moun- tain barriers into the heart of the forests. Ken- tucky was but a continuation of Virginia under pioneer conditions. After the first settlements had been made by explorers from Virginia and North Carolina, a strong tide of immigration set in from these two states. In 1780 and the following years at least five thousand souls per annum must have migrated from eastern Virginia into Kentucky and at the close of the Revolution many old soldiers sought new homes in this western frontier. During the last two decades of the Eighteenth century the English population beyond the Alleghanies grew enormously. By the census of 1790 Kentucky's
THE ENGLISH IN THE SOUTH. 10?
white population was nearly 62,000, and it was of almost pure English ancestry.
Tennessee was peopled in the main by North Car- olinians, the territory being a part of North Car- olina until 1790, when it was ceded to the general government. The population was somewhat more mixed than that of Kentucky, men of Scotch and Huguenot ancestry, such as James Robertson and John Sevier, being leaders among the early perma- nent settlers. Kentucky had been settled more largely from Virginia, while Tennessee was a con- tinuation of the now more varied population of North Carolina.
Thus far westward and southwestward had the English race pushed itself at the beginning of our national existence. South and west of the territory already discussed lay the extensive regions under Spanish and French influence, from which the present states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Texas and Okla- homa were carved. Into this great territory the tide of immigration between 1800 and 1840 flowed strong and steady down the Mississippi, through the wilderness and across the mountains from the northeast. The census reports of 1820 and 1830 show an enormous increase of settlers from adjoin- ing states, sons and daughters of the restless Saxon, now thoroughly Americanized, but impelled by the old Elizabethan thirst for adventure and hunger for fresh lands. It is the same spirit that moved Walter Raleigh to sink several fortunes in coloniz- ing expeditions westward and Francis Bacon to write an essay on Plantations.
n. NATIONAL.
"With the acquisition of the great Louisiana ter- ritory from France in 1803 and the annexation of
108 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
Texas in 1845 the English race owned North Amer- ica; the rest is simply the question of internal divi- sion and development. The achievements of the English in the South in the building of the present American Nation must now be outlined.
The history of the South is, of course, very largely a history of the English race in the South. No other part of the United States is so homogeneous in its population or more tenacious of ancestral traditions. The predominant English society of the colonial days in the Atlantic states continued, with slight modifications caused by economic and political changes, far into the Nineteenth century. The dis- tinctive society of the old South was seen at its best in Virginia and South Carolina, the two colonies most closely bound to the mother country by indus- trial and social intercourse. In Virginia, and to a somewhat less extent in Maryland, there was a large class of hereditary landowners with social distinc- tion and an abundance of leisure, with political in- fluence and high standards of intelligence. Life was rural and the plantation was the social unit; tobacco was the main crop, cultivated by slave labor under an overseer who belonged to a lower social order than the owner of the estate. The center of the plantation was the mansion, about which clus- tered various outhouses in which were carried on such industries as were necessary for the mainte- nance of an extensive household. At a convenient distance were the negro quarters, forming on large estates a small village community of dependants. Thus the plantation was, in a way, a combination of the English village and the factory. The court- house was the centre of political activity in the county and not of trade. There was constant social communication between plantations ; hospitality was lavish ; sports like those of the English country gen-
THE ENGLISH IN THE SOUTH. 109
try, such as fox-hunting and horse-racing, for in- stance, varied the monotony of country life. The relations between master and slave were, in Virginia at least, kindly. There were, of course, small planters with less pretentious households, and there were, in Maryland, North Carolina and Georgia, yeoman farmers, with some free labor; but in gen- eral, plantation life in the colonial and early national South suggests the mediaeval manor of rural Eng- land.
In South Carolina the centre of social life was the city. Here the rice-planter or indigo-planter lived, while his plantation was worked by a band of slaves under an overseer often harsh and even cruel. The owner of the estate was an absentee lord who lived in the city and who occasionally visited his rice-fields. Indeed, many English merchants lived in Charleston, dividing their time between the colony and England. The climate and topography of South Carolina did not make for rural residence as in the more northern Southern colonies. Both Virginia and South Carolina, however, ''depended for the amenities, and even in some measure for the neces- saries, of life on intercourse with the mother country." In these two colonies the affection for British institutions and customs was doubtless stronger than in any of the others.
How nearly did this old Southern society resemble that of rural England? There was, as Doyle re- marks in his English Colonies in America, a resem- blance in tastes and habits. There was a sort of aristocracy, and there was temperamentally the same general political, economic and religious atti- tude ; but there were no actual lords and knights of the shire, there was no village of the English type, there was no rigid ecclesiastical hierarchy with pre-
* Doyle: Englith Colonies in America.
110 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
scriptive rights, and there was little free labor. It was, indeed, an English society in the new western world, but an English society with a difference. Pioneer conditions are great levelers, and Southern society with all its old-world traditions was, in the main, democratic. Its seeming exclusiveness was in part due to its remoteness from the industrial cur- rents of the world; its very provincialism was a guarantee of simplicity and a source of infinite charm.
Where individualism is so highly developed, it is almost impossible to effect large unity of action. This was true with the Southern colonies. Local pride was strong, and local pride together with the Anglo-Saxon love of self-government developed later into the doctrine of State Rights. There could be no political centralization as in modern Eng- land. Even in North Carolina, where economic lim- itations made white labor more profitable and where the sentiments of an aristocracy were wanting, the same opposition or indifference to union prevailed. This decentralizing tendency, which ultimately re- sulted in the withdrawal of the South from the Union, was itself an English inheritance.
The word English is here used in a broad sense, be it remembered ; for the Scotch- Irish, who settled western Virginia, western North and South Caro- lina, northeastern Tennessee and parts of Kentucky, were part English, as has already been pointed out. These people early coalesced with the pure English element and in the march westward exerted a con- trolling influence. Next to the English, the Scotch- Irish form the most virile and important race con- tribution of the old world to the new. They helped to democratize church and state and, in general, to emphasize individual and communal freedom. They were distributed along the frontiers of all the col-
THE ENGLISH IN THE SOUTH. Ill
onies, becoming in time the great amalgamating race; they were intensely democratic and intensely Protestant; they were, above all, men of action. From this sturdy stock came many of the great leaders'of opinion in the South from Andrew Jack- son to John C. Calhoun and Stonewall Jackson.
The social life of slave-holding communities, as typified in eastern Virginia, Maryland and South Carolina, was, of course, quite different from that of mountain regions and more western districts set- tled by pioneers or by the descendants of indentured immigrants. Here democratic conditions prevailed ; the farms were small, there was no negro labor, no direct communication with England and little leisure either for social amenities or for intellectual or aesthetic culture. From the mountain hut and the frontier cabin went forth the man of action to build new commonwealths or to cut highways westward through the forest. Others, descendants of degen- erate or of criminal ancestors, slothfully preferred the security of mountain fastnesses, where they still dwell, indifferent to the march of material and mental progress.
But beyond the foothills of the Appalachians east and west down the Mississippi Valley stretched a vast, rich region occupied by the present ''Cotton States" of the South. Most of these states came from the old Spanish and French territory. During the ten or twenty years following the passage of the law against the foreign slave trade in 1808, thousands of English-speaking men and women migrated from Virginia and the Carolinas into this fertile region for the purpose of raising cotton with slave labor. Others came down the Mississippi from Kentucky and Tennessee and more northern states. From Georgia across through Texas the "Black Belt" was being rapidly settled, the rich strip of
112 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
land and the valleys falling to the richer immigrants, the sandy lowlands to the smaller farmers, and the outlying regions, hilly and pine-covered, to the "poor whites" who came in the wake of the more prosperous, energetL folk. Considered socially the population of the states of the lower South was, with slight modifications due to French and Spanish pio- neer settlements, divided into large and small plant- ers, mechanics and tradesmen (few in number), impecunious whites, and negro slaves — the classifi- cation already mentioned as obtaining in Virginia and the Carolinas. Thus by the end of the first quarter of the Nineteenth century we find the lower South or cotton states united racially, whether as purely English or, speaking more inclusively, Brit- ish, with the Atlantic and with the western states of the southern group.
The English race has, then, given to the United States its language, its form of society, and of gov- ernment; has largely determined its form of relig- ion, and has afforded opportunities for individual development. In New England and the South the impress of English custom has been most marked. Because of the South 's adherence for so long to a form of primitive industry, a primitive labor sys- tem, and a patriarchal mode of life, New England far outstripped her in industrial progress, in liter- ary development, in educational advance, and in the inventiveness and thrift of an essentially democratic society. In the building of the nation, however, the English race in the South has made at least three important contributions: First, a social contribu- tion ; for the charm and distinction of the society of the older South have given to American history its most romantic traditions, rich material for future poem and story and drama. We have as yet hardly begun to appreciate this inheritance from a van-
THE ENGLISH IN THE SOUTH. 113
ished society of purely English origin. To it we shall in coming years go back hunting treasures for the enrichment of our literature.
Second, an exploratory contribution. Just before the Eevolutionary War 3everal exploring parties led by Virginians of English descent had penetrated into the west and northwest regions claimed by Vir- ginia. The greatest of these leaders was George Rogers Clark, who, from his new home in the Ken- tucky territory, explored a part of the great North- west region, defeating the British in several critical battles, and winning the vast tract out of which sev- eral states of the middle West have been formed. Another pioneer hero was Andrew Lewis, whose name is associated with Clark's in that important border warfare against the Indians and the British.
Third, and more important still, a legislative con- tribution. Two groups of statesmen in the South have exercised a powerful influence in national af- fairs— the Revolutionary group, centering in Vir- ginia, from 1776 to about 1830 ; and the Lower South group, between 1830 and 1860. The first were es- sentially constructive, while the second were, in the main, defenders of the established order of vested rights against which the other sections of the coun- try were protesting. Of the Southern men who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution a very large majority were of pure English ancestry. These makers of our govern- ment, from Washington to Marshall, were sprung from the higher classes of colonial society. Their forbears had come straight to the Virginia coast from an atmosphere still colored with the fading splendors of Elizabethan England. It was a great group for achievement in war, in government, in diplomacy. They were lords of the plantation, clever debaters and forceful orators, resourceful execu-
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tives, f arseeing promoters, and several of them were prophets. With the Saxon sense for individual and economic freedom the wisest among them were already troubled about the deadening slave system, but they could see no way out of it. Later on in the century it was a native Virginian who had moved westward, Henry Clay, that tried to harmonize the differing sections by successive compromises on this vital question And still later it was a man of Eng- lish blood, of humble Virginia ancestry, who as head of the nation in the great crisis settled forever the question which had given Jefferson and other great Virginians such grave concern.
Looked at from various points of view that early group of Southern nation-builders illustrates more clearly the principles of constructive statesmanship than any other group of Americans. We find there the flower of the English race in the new world de- veloped out of nearly two centuries of colonial cul- ture. From this group came the majority of our early Presidents, several of the ablest of our first diplomatists, members of cabinets and of Congress, and one supremely great jurist, John Marshall, whose opinions with their background of ancient English law, read in the light of the later develop- ment of the United States, have a distinctively pro- phetic element. In educational policies Thomas Jef- ferson was a prophet ; indeed, we are just beginning to realize in the South the farsighted wisdom of his views of public education. Now these men, like the Southern leaders of two or three decades later, as a rule came into politics from a law office or from the plantation where they had received administrative training. It was their character and life more than anything else, perhaps, that gave them leadership. The old plantation life, with its hereditary owner- ship of land after the order of English country
THE ENGLISH IN THE SOUTH. 115
gentry, starved out the educational and intellectual rights of the landless whites — an evil for which we are to-day trying to make amends to these belated Elizabethans of the Southern mountains and pine- barrens — but it did make forceful leaders, self- dependent, aggressive, whose opinions were some- times more logical than broadly true. And when, towards the close of the first quarter of the century, the power of this Eevolutionary group began to wane, their followers, impelled by an English love of expansion and a hunger for land and adventure, carried their social and political ideals to the lower undeveloped South. Through the following decades up to the beginning of the War of Secession these men of the lower South gave evidence of their insti- tutional as well as blood kinship to the older leaders of the upper South.
During these years a new set of Southern leaders had come upon the scene, such men as Clay of Ken- tucky, Calhoun and Butler of South Carolina, Will- iam B. King and C. C. Clay of Alabama; Toombs, Cobb and Stephens of Georgia, and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi. Most of these new leaders claimed English ancestry; others were of Scotch-Irish or Welsh descent on one side of the house; now and then a French name appears, as Soule of Louisiana. These and other names figure prominently in the list of cabinet officers, members of Congress, mem- bers of the United States Supreme Court, and min- isters to foreign courts. Of the nine Presidents from the Southern states seven were of English ancestry; and he who cares to study the names of the men in the ascendancy at Washington in the mid-Nineteenth century will find the English stock from the Southern states largely shaping legislation even as it did in the days of the great Virginia group. All this ceased, of course, with the coming
116 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
of the great conflict about slavery. In the War of Secession the South, true to its English instinct — at least the lower South and its Eastern Virginia ancestry — defended its conception of local rights, fought for the old order and against the new. The splendid heroism of the Southern actors in that mighty drama, of whom Lee, a man of English race, was chief, is the principal legacy of that time to this.
During the years of national prominence the pio- neer impulse had not been wanting in the lower South ; it was but a repetition of that restless Saxon longing for new lands which drove Washington on his early journeys westward, and which in the clos- ing years of the Eighteenth century sent long trains of emigrants across the Alleghanies and down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Before the adven- turous men of the lower South stretched the vast, virtually unexplored regions to the west and south- west, while to the south were the Latin-American states with their reputed wealth, and to the south- east the Florida peninsula, and not far beyond the Island of Cuba. All the inherited race-tendencies of the Southern people urged them to explore and to possess these inviting lands. It was entirely nat- ural, therefore, that they should try to annex Texas and Cuba. They did annex Texas and they fought Mexico, for both the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War were mainly the doing of Southern leaders. They did not annex Cuba; but when in 1898 President McKinley called for men to free Cuba from the Spaniard, these same English- descended Southerners, distant kinsmen of Kaleigh and Nathaniel Bacon, such as Fitzhugh Lee and Joseph Wheeler, promptly responded and chival- rously succored an oppressed people.
The opening of the Golden Gate on the California coast about the middle of the century invited still
THE ENGLISH IN THE SOUTH. 117
further westward the land- and gold-hungry men of the South. On across Arkansas and Texas, follow- ing in the tracks of Bowie and Travis and Crockett and Houston made years before, went wagonload after wagonload of emigrants. They opened the way for a steady march of pioneers across the plains bent on possessing a new promised land. Here they met streams from the northeast and from the ad- jacent west, and here the wandering New Englander met his Southern kinsman and both made them- selves at home. Thus, steadily the British peoples of the South have made their way over all the southwestern country. They have developed that vast region into the territories of Arizona, New Mexico, and the state of Oklahoma, once the lands of a Spanish people. At last the imperial dreams of the makers of Elizabethan land-granting charters have been realized : the English colonies have indeed stretched themselves "up into the land from sea to sea."
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Brown, A.: Genesis of the United States; Brown, W. G. : The Lower South in Am. History; Bruce: Economic History of Virginia; Channing: Town and County Government; Cooke: Vir- ginia (and other state histories in American Commomvealths Series) ; Doyle: English Colonies in America; Eggleston: Beginners of a Nation; Fisher: Men, Women and Manners in Colonial Times; Fiske: Old Virginia and Her Neighbors and Critical Period of American His- tory; Hart: Formation of the Union and American History Told by Contemporaries; Lodge: Short History of the English Colonies in America; Neill: English Colonization of America; Osgood: American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century; Roosevelt : The Winning of the West; Thwaites: The Colonies (1492-1750); Tyler: English in Amer- ica; Wilson: Division and Reunion; Winsor: Narrative and Critical History; Publications of the Historical Societies of Virginia, Mary- land, North Carolina and South Carolina.
JOHN CALVIN METCALF, Professor of English, Richmond College.
118 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
CHAPTEB II. THE FRENCH IN THE SOUTH.
History.
HE first Frenchmen that we see in what is now the southern part of the United States are the men whom the great Admiral Coligny sent to Florida to found a colony where the French Protestants might practice their religion without being molested. The leader of the expedition was Jean Eibaut, and on May 1, 1562, his men landed from two ships at the mouth of a river which they called May, and which is now the St. John's in Florida. After taking possession of the country in the name of the king of France Eibaut continued his exploration, and on the coast of South Carolina built Charlesfort. He then sailed for France, leaving in the fort a small garrison which soon quarreled among themselves, murdered their commander and returned to Europe in a small boat which they had built.
Meanwhile Coligny had fitted three ships to bring relief to Eibaut 's colonists, and the expedition, com- manded by Eene de Laudonniere, sailed from Havre in April, 1564. They reached the mouth of the Eiver of May or St. John's, and built a fort six miles from the sea, which they named La Caroline. The settlers, however, disagreed and neglected to cultivate the soil, and were reduced to such misery that Laudonniere was preparing to return to Eu- rope, when in 1565 the famous buccaneer, John Hawkins, arrived at La Caroline. He offered to take back to France all the colonists, but Laudon- niere did not accept his offer, and buying one of the
THE FRENCH IN THE SOUTH. 119
ships of Hawkins, decided to remain at his post. Belief soon came from France with seven ships under the command of Jean Ribaut, and the colony might have prospered had it not been attacked by the Spaniards. The latter considered that Florida belonged to them by right of discovery and resolved to destroy the French settlement. This was done in September, 1565, by Pedro Menendez de Aviles, who arrived off the coast of Florida five days after Ribaut had reached La Caroline. The French fleet was dispersed by a storm, the fort was captured, its defenders were put to the sword, and Ribaut and his shipwrecked followers were ruthlessly put to death by Menendez. The Spanish commander had spared the women and children in the fort, and some of the French had succeeded in escaping. The fact that the French colonists were Protestants doubtless made Menendez more severe in his treat- ment of them. In that age of religious intolerance many crimes were committed in the name of the religion of the gentle Christ. It is said that in 1568 Dominique de Gourges, a French Catholic nobleman, fitted an expedition to avenge his countrymen, cap- tured La Caroline and put to death the Spanish garrison, "not as Spaniards, but as traitors, robbers and murderers." Coligny had not succeeded any better in Florida than he had done in Brazil in 1555.
French Huguenots.
The terrible religious wars of the Sixteenth cen- tury came to an end when Henry of Navarre estab- lished securely his power as king of France, and granted, in 1598, the Edict of Nantes which gave religious freedom to the Protestants. The latter were attacked by Richelieu, during the reign of Louis XIII., as a political party, but were not per- secuted for their religion. Louis XIV., however, de-
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stroyed the great work of his grandfather, Henry IV., when he revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685. A great many Protestants fled from France at that time, and a considerable number had left their coun- try before 1685, in order to escape from the vexa- tions and even persecutions to which they were sub- jected. From England many Huguenots came to America, settling in the South, principally at Charleston in South Carolina, although 700 estab- lished, in 1700, a settlement in Virginia, at a place which they called Manakinton, a short distance from Richmond. They were given 10,000 acres on the lands of the extinct Manakin tribe of Indians. Their leader was the Marquis de la Muce. There were also a few Huguenots who settled in Florida at that time, and others in Maryland.
The descendants of the French Protestants in the North and in the South of the present United States were, many of them, distinguished men, such as Francis Marion, Colonel Huger, and Legare, of South Carolina; Marion, the gallant soldier of the Revolution ; Huger, the devoted friend of Lafayette, and Legare (French L'Egare), an eminent man of letters and statesman. Many other distinguished families in the South might be mentioned, in whose veins flows the blood of the French Huguenots of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries. Indeed, in regard to ability, the descendants of the French in America rank very high, and Senator Lodge, quoted by Mr. Rosengarten in his French Colonists and Exiles in America, says: "If we add the French and the French Huguenots together, we find that the people of French blood exceed absolutely, in the ability produced, all the other races represented in Appleton's Encyclopedia of American Biography, except the English and Scotch-Irish, and show a
i. Antoine Rigaud. 2. Benjamin La Trobe.
3. Marquis de Grouchy. 4. Rene de Laudonniere. 5. Charles Lallemand.
THE FKENCH IN THE SOUTH. 121
percentage in proportion to their total original im- migration much higher than that of any other race. ' '
The Creoles of Louisiana.
The influence of the French Huguenots had been considerable, but the refugees did not found in the South any permanent large settlement. It was French Catholics who established, in 1699, at the present Ocean Springs, the colony of Louisiana, which has exerted a great influence on the history and the civilization of the United States. It was a Frenchman, La Salle, who explored and named the country watered by the great Mississippi and who lost his life in an attempt to colonize Louisiana. It was a French Canadian, Iberville, who, aided by his brother Bienville, succeeded in colonizing the coun- try named by La Salle for King Louis XIV. It was Frenchmen and their sons who thought, in 1768, of establishing a republic in New Orleans, after they had expelled the Spanish governor imposed upon them ; and when Galvez drove the British from West Florida and took a glorious part in the war of the American Eevolution, he had Louisianians of French origin among his most valiant soldiers. The Creoles of Louisiana, the descendants of the French colonists, of pure white blood, have played such an important part in the history of Louisiana that it is impossible to relate that history without men- tioning them. They fought under Jackson in 1814 and 1815 as well as under Galvez in 1779, 1780, and 1781, and when the great War between the States broke out in 1861, one of the ablest and most chiv- alric captains of the Confederacy was G. T. Beaure- gard, a Creole of Louisiana.
Bossu, a French officer stationed in Louisiana in 1751, said: "One calls Creoles those who are born of a Frenchman and a Frenchwoman or of a Euro-
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pean woman. The Creoles, in general, are very brave, tall and well made; they have many talents for the arts and sciences; but as they cannot cul- tivate them perfectly on account of the scarcity of good teachers, the rich and sensible fathers do not fail to send their children to France, as to the first school in the world in all things. As to the sex that has no other duty to perform but that of pleasing, it is born here with that advantage and has no need to go to seek the deceitful art in Europe."
Colonel Francisco Bouligny, in a memoir to the Spanish government, said in 1776: "The Creoles are of a healthy and robust temperament, capable of the most violent exercises. Accustomed from childhood to hunting, they pass entire days with their feet in the water, without suffering the least inconvenience. Their industry and diligence are not less, because it is rare to see a father of a family who does not have the best books about agriculture and the exploitation of timber and lumber. There are few houses of which the furniture has not been made by the owners themselves, and men of means do not disdain to pass entire days handling a plow, in the mill, in the carpenter shop or the blacksmith shop. In all other countries, the men who devote themselves to cultivation of the fields are mere day- laborers in general, and the owners of important plantations disdain the knowledge and the details of husbandry. In this country, on the contrary, there is a noble and worthy pride, since the greatest praise that can be given to a young man is to call him a good planter, that is to say, a man who under- stands the labors of the fields. The ladies them- selves distinguish and praise the most intelligent and the most diligent, a policy sufficiently strong to make the country reach the highest perfection. The Creoles are not satisfied with theory only, but with
THE FRENCH IN THE SOUTH. 123
daily practice, without having that rudeness which is brought about generally by the heavy labors of the fields. They leave the plow which they have been handling for hours to offer their hands to a lady to help her across the furrows that they them- selves have opened. Foreigners admire the elegance of their manners and the good sense with which they reason on all subjects."
The French literature of Louisiana, the literature of the Creoles, is interesting and important. It began in 1779 with a short epic poem, and has con- tinued to our day. Poems, dramas, histories, novels have been written in Louisiana, of which some may be compared with works written in France by authors of great merit, and to preserve the French language in the state a literary society, the Athe- nee Louisianais, was established in 1876. There is also in New Orleans a daily French paper, I'Abeille de la Nouvelle-Orleans, founded in 1827, in which are published the laws enacted by the legis- lature and judicial advertisements. The Creoles of Louisiana are greatly attached to the French lan- guage and use it in their homes as a mother tongue, although they know English also.
The French in the South.
In speaking of the French in the South we may recall the fact that it was in Virginia that Cornwallis surrendered his sword to Washington, who had received the powerful aid of Lafayette, of Bocham- beau, of French soldiers and French sailors. After the War of the Revolution the South received the visit, in 1797, of the Duke of Orleans, later King Louis Philippe, and his brothers Beaujolais and Montpensier, who resided in Louisiana for a short time. In 1804 General Moreau, the victor of Hohen- linden, was in New Orleans. General Humbert was
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there also and took part in the battle of New Or- leans, as well as many other Frenchmen who were of great aid to Jackson by their military knowledge.
After Waterloo many officers of Napoleon left France, either because they were exiled by the Bourbons or feared their rule. A few escaped who might have shared the fate of the heroic Ney had they remained in France, and among them were the brothers Charles and Henri Lallemand, Lef ebvre Desnouettes, Grouchy and his two sons, and Clausel and Rigaud. Joseph Bonaparte was in New Jersey, and the Napoleonic exiles considered him their chief in America. They were, most of them, without means of subsistence, and they decided to form an agricultural settlement. They obtained from Con- gress a grant of four townships, each six miles square, for the cultivation of the vine and olive on the Tombigbee in the Mississippi Territory, near Mobile. They gave the name Marengo to a county and began the foundation of the town of Demopolis which they soon abandoned. The agricultural en- terprise of the officers of Napoleon was a failure, for in their glorious wars in Europe they had had little time to attend to the cultivation of the vine and olive and were incompetent farmers. Their attempt, however, is a curious incident in history, and although they failed, their lot was not as un- happy as that of their wonderful commander, who, on the rock of St. Helena, had, as Victor Hugo says, "only the picture of a child and the map of the world."
Stranger than the settlement of "the vine and olive" and still more unsuccessful was the colony on the Trinity River in Texas, which Generals Rigaud and Lallemand endeavored to found in 1818. The Champ d'Asile of the French soldiers was in- vaded by the Spanish garrison at San Antonio and
THE FRENCH IN THE SOUTH. 125
at La Bahia and had to retreat before overwhelm- ing numbers. They took refuge at Galveston, where Jean Lafitte had established himself after the battle of New Orleans, in which he and his Baratarian smugglers or pirates had rendered great services to the Americans. Lafitte received kindly the unfor- tunate companions of Napoleon and helped them to go to New Orleans, where they were hospitably re- ceived by the Creoles of Louisiana. The story of the Napoleonic exiles in America has been admirably told by Dr. Jesse S. Eeeves in the Johns Hopkins Historical Studies (1905).
The Frenchman Lafitte and his pirates were chased from Galveston and the Mexican Gulf by an American ship. Louis Aury had also, shortly before Lafitte, to surrender Amelia Island, near Galveston, to American forces. French settlements in the South, in the Nineteenth century, were not success- ful, but the Frenchmen who have come to our South- land, from the Seventeenth century to the Twentieth, carried with them the admirable qualities of their race: their sociability, their sense of the esthetic, their chivalric courage; and their coming has been a notable contribution to the civilization of the United States. See THE HISTORY OF LOUISIANA (Vol. III.) ; also LOUISIANA'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE LITERATURE OF THE UNITED STATES (Vol. VII.).
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Baird, Charles W. : History of the Huguenot Emi- gration to America; Fortier: Louisiana Studies, History of Louisiana; Eeeves, Jesse S.: The Napoleonic Exiles in America, in Johns Hopkins University Studies in History and Political Science (1905); Bosen- garten, J. G.: French Colonists and Exiles in the United States.
ALCEE FORTIER,
Professor of Romance Languages, Tulane University; Author of H'ittory of Louisiana, etc.
1186 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER III. THE SPANISH IN THE SOUTH.
Spain's Great Opportunity.
0 full is our early history of the struggle between the English and the French for the mastery of the region between the Atlantic and the Great Lakes that it is hard for us to realize how near Spain came to possessing in per- petuity the vaster region between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Before either England or France had set foot on the continent, Ponce de Leon had pene- trated into Florida, Pineda had found the mouth of the Mississippi, De Soto had traversed the South from Florida to Arkansas, Coronado had pressed forward from Mexico beyond the Bed, and Menendez had founded the oldest city in our land.
All this was in the Sixteenth century when Spain was the greatest European power both by land and sea. It was not until the beginning of the Seven- teenth that the first French and English colonies were planted. But for her arduous efforts in the Old World to maintain her supremacy during that century, she might easily have extended her colonies in the New over both continents. Even with the great struggle before her against the genius of William of Orange, Henry of Navarre, and Eliza- beth of England, she did ultimately settle Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and California.
But her colonies were from first to last under mili- tary and ecclesiastic rule. Self-government never could develop. Their governors were sent out from Spain. Their commerce was directed by the House of Trade at Seville.
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Discovery of Florida.
To the Spaniards the name Florida originally meant the whole eastern half of the present United States. This conception was in time limited by the successive successful settlements of the French and the English. It was discovered by accident. Juan Ponce de Leon, governor of Puerto Eico, setting out in search of the fountain of perpetual youth reported to be on the island of Bimini, was driven by a tem- pest to the coast of the mainland. Arriving there on Palm Sunday, March 27, 1513, he named the country Florida — Pascua Florida being the Spanish name of the day. Going to Spain, he got leave from the emperor Charles the Fifth to conquer it. This he attempted to do, but was repulsed by the natives. Expedition after expedition failed, Ayllon's along the Atlantic coast as far as the James, Narvaez's to Tampa Bay, De Soto's from Tampa Bay to the "Washita, that of the Dominican Balbastro to convert the natives. Meanwhile the French intruded.
Menendez Succeeds.
At last a colony was really planted by Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles, who founded in 1565 the town of Saint Augustine after destroying the French Huguenot colony planted by Laudonniere on the Eiver May, as the French called the St. John's. Ayllon's first expedition sent by him to investigate was driven by storm to the South Carolina coast and anchored in the mouth of the Combahee, calling it the Jordan. Here the Spaniards kidnapped Indians and left among the natives a reputation for perfidy. The expedition then made by Ayllon him- self paid the penalty. Perfidy met perfidy, and the Spaniards were massacred. The expedition of Nar- vaez was of value, on account of the adventures of Cabeza de Vaca, one of its few survivors, since he
128 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
finally wandered through the southwest to Culiacan in Mexico. That of De Soto was of immense impor- tance, since it gave Spain her claim to the whole region touching on the Gulf and the Mississippi. He did in fact march as a conqueror through Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and even into Arkansas. But rich in incident and exploit as it is, the scope of this paper does not permit a detailed account of his expedition. The survivors, led by Moscoso, built brigantines and sailed down the Mis- sissippi, finding their way at last to Mexico after three years* wanderings in our Southland.
Destruction of the French Colony.
Menendez sailed from Cadiz on his enterprise, which had the double purpose of ousting the French and establishing a Spanish colony, about the same time that Eibaut left Dieppe on his second voyage. Soon after the destruction of Fort Caroline, he succeeded in capturing the shipwrecked forces of Eibaut who had come to succor the garrison, and massacred them all. The deed was avenged by a private gentleman of Gascony, the Chevalier Dom- inique de Gourges, who with the Indians for his allies took three forts erected by the Spaniards and hanged his prisoners on the trees Menendez was believed by the French to have used. He put up over them the inscription : "I do this not as to Spaniards, but as to traitors, thieves, and murderers," the report in France being that Menendez had hung up his victims under a placard reading : " I do this not as to Frenchmen, but as to Lutherans." However, the ruthless ability of Menendez foiled the magnifi- cent plan of Coligny to give the Huguenots a home in the New World.
East Florida.
Menendez planted his principal colony at St. Augustine, so named from its being founded on that
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saint's day, August 28; but he also established other posts at Cape Canaveral and at Port Royal. He visited his colony again in 1572.
Meanwhile Dominican and Jesuit missionaries did what they could to extend the control of the Span- iards over the province. The Indians were long hostile and the Spaniards made slow progress in settling the country. Twice, too, St. Augustine was captured and plundered by English adventurers, in 1586 by Francis Drake, and in 1665 by the pirate John Davis. Later, when the Yemassees became embroiled with the colonists of Carolina and Georgia, the Spaniards found them ready allies.
West Florida.
The history of West Florida is in a measure apart from that of East Florida. Pensacola, the bay of which was visited by Maldonado, De Soto's admiral, in January, 1540, and fixed upon as the place of rendezvous for fleet and army, though never so used, was settled in 1696 by Don Andres de Arriola. At first its relations with the French colony at Biloxi and New Orleans were amicable. But when war was declared by France against Spain, before its governor was apprised of that fact, Bienville took Pensacola by surprise in May, 1719. In August the Spanish governor, who had been landed at Havana by the French, paid him back, for he took the place from Bienville 's brother by surprise. But Bienville took it a second time the same year, and this time burned it. When peace was made, however, he reluctantly obeyed the orders which came to him from France, and restored it to the Spaniards. When in 1763 Florida was ceded to Great Britain, the inhabitants of Pensacola sailed away to Vera Cruz.
The wealth and power which the conquistadores
KoLlft—9
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had won for Spain, fortified by the military skill begun for her by Gonsalvo de Cordova, were neutral- ized by the absolutism and the bigotry of Philip II. and his successors. Spain began to decline, and the very means that had brought her to supremacy helped to accelerate her decay.
Sea Power Lost by Spain.
Long before the Spanish Armada was shattered, the English "sea dogs" were a terror to Spain and her colonies. But that catastrophe definitely lost her the lordship of the sea, and with the loss of her maritime supremacy her colonies were virtually gone, though she lost them slowly and gradually. Yet it was long before the world realized the decad- ence of Spain. Even in the earlier years of the Eighteenth century, she continued to be the same terror to the southern colonies of England that Prance was to the northern.
War Between English and Spanish Colonies.
When in 1670 the English colony at Charles Town was founded, the Spanish at Saint Augustine were indignant at what they considered foreign intrusion into their territory, and in all the wars between the natives and the English they intrigued with the Indians and aided them secretly or openly. Repeated attacks were made on the English colonists in South Carolina, and in that province expeditions were again and again set on foot to punish the raids from St. Augustine. In 1686 the Spaniards broke up the colony of Lord Cardross at Stuart's Town on Port Royal Island after plundering Governor Morton's plantation on the Edisto. During the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted from 1701 to 1713, an expedition led by Governor James Moore set out to take St. Augustine. The town was taken and
THE SPANISH IN THE SOUTH. 131
plundered, but the castle held out, and the arrival of Spanish ships forced Moore to raise the siege and withdraw, leaving his ships and supplies to the enemy. In 1706 a combined French and Spanish fleet under the command of Le Feboure threatened Charles Town and even landed troops, but they were beaten off both by land and sea.
In 1715 when the Yemassees rose at Pocotaligo and massacred some four hundred settlers in the lower parishes, on their being driven out of the Carolina colony by Governor Craven the Spaniards welcomed the fugitives at St. Augustine with ringing of bells and firing of cannon.
Georgia Founded.
It was this ceaseless danger from the Spanish and their tribal allies that led to the settlement of Georgia. James Edward Oglethorpe, with the double motive of rescuing imprisoned debtors from their miseries and of establishing a military outpost against Spanish invasion, organized in 1732 a com- pany to plant a new colony between the Savannah and the Altamaha.
The Stirring Times of Oglethorpe.
He was given ample powers as governor and com- mander-in-chief. Short as was his stay in the New World, he accomplished much. He conciliated the Creeks and had them for allies against the Spanish. He brought over a regiment of Scotch Highlanders, who afterwards settled in the colony. He built the fortified town of Frederica on St. Simon's Island, and planted forts on other islands to the southward. He foiled more than one attack of the Spaniards of St. Augustine by strategy. He failed indeed in 1740 to take St. Augustine; but after his defeat of the formidable expedition led by Montiano, governor of
132 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
St. Augustine, first in the Battle of the Bloody Marsh on St. Simon's Island, and then by his dex- terous use of a deserter to fill the enemy with sud- den panic, the English colonies in the South were no longer molested by the Spanish.
Florida English, Louisiana Spanish.
When the Seven Years' War ended with the Peace of Paris in 1763, Great Britain restored to Spain Cuba and the Philippines, but Florida was ceded to Great Britain, and as some compensation to Spain for her humiliation France was induced to cede to her Louisiana. Her rule was now over continuous territory on the Gulf from Mobile westward, includ- ing a vast domain in the valley of the Mississippi.
West Florida Spanish Again.
When she went to war with England her colonies in America were, on May 8, 1779, authorized to join in the attack on the English possessions in West Florida. Bernardo de Galvez, the able governor of Louisiana,— from whom Galveston in Texas took its name, — attacked the English posts and annexed once more to the Spanish crown the province of West Florida. Pensacola was taken in May, 1781, Spanish troops occupying all military posts. The Natchez district formed a part of this province, extending from the Yazoo to Bayou Sara. It now became a dependency of Louisiana.
Minorcan Colonists.
It was during the British occupation of East Florida that the planter Turnbull brought over his colony of Minorcans to New Smyrna. They were greatly dissatisfied and charged Turnbull with cru- elty. Many Spanish families left the country rather than remain under British rule.
THE SPANISH IN THE SOUTH. 133
All Florida Spanish Again.
At the close of the American Revolution the Peace of Paris in 1783 gave back to Spain Minorca and the Floridas. During the War of 1812, as the British made free use of Florida against us, Jackson cap- tured Pensacola, but it was soon restored to Spain.
Florida Ceded to the United States.
In 1820 the complications resulting from Jack- son's campaign against the Seminoles who had raided Georgia from East Florida made it so desir- able for Spain to part with the province and for the United States to secure it that negotiations were entered into which ended in the purchase of it from Spain in July, 1821, for five million dollars.
With the exception of Florida, all those posses- sions of Spain in North America which are now in the United States formed parts of Mexico. The mother country, however, was late in settling even many parts of Mexico itself. She was far too busy battling heresy and contending for empire in Europe to extend the conquests made by those brilliant adventurers who went forth from her bosom in the early years of the Sixteenth century.
New Mexico.
The colonization of California and New Mexico preceded that of Texas. In 1595, after many others had failed in the attempt to conquer it, Juan de Ofiate induced the viceroy Velasco to allow him to settle New Mexico. He set out from Zacatecas in 1598, crossed the Bio Grande at El Paso, where he established his southernmost post, and founded his first capital at San Juan de Caballeros, though later Santa Fe was founded and became the capital. The Indians having been seemingly brought under con-
134 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
trol, in 1599 he explored Arizona in part and a few years later followed the Gila down to the Gulf of California. Franciscans made haste to plant mis- sions in the pueblos of New Mexico. In spite of the claims of the Texans at a much later date this con- quest of Onate 's was a separate province, depending directly on Mexico. But revolts of the native pueblos were frequent.
French Claims Lead to Spanish Settlement.
It was the settlement of La Salle in 1685 within the borders of what is now Texas that moved Spain to plant her first outposts between the Bio Grande and the Sabine. Beginning with missions and mili- tary posts, she established frontier colonies in the region where Nacogdoches now stands, contenting herself with destroying La Salle 's abandoned fort on the Bay of San Bernard. In 1700 the outpost mission of San Juan Bautista was established near the Bio Grande, not far from the modern Eagle Pass. The authorities then again went to sleep, until aroused by the appearance in 1714 of Saint-Denis at the presidio attached to this mission.
Missions and Presidios in Texas.
This reminded them that the French had in the meantime gained possession of the mouth of the Mississippi and that their colony of Louisiana now intervened between the Spain of Florida and the Spain of Mexico. Missions and presidios were again planted in the Nacogdoches region, and this time also in the vicinity of La Salle 's unsuccessful set- tlement and at San Antonio de Bejar. In fact, up to the time of the coming of the American colonists there were no fewer than twenty-five missions and presidios founded. But they were by that time all in a state of decay. The very good they did was
THE SPANISH IN THE SOUTH. 135
counterbalanced by the stifling strictness of both civil and ecclesiastical organization. Men under Spanish rule moved like automata to the sound of drum and bell. Every mission was an industrial school, it is true; but the pupils remained always under tutelage. The discipline was rigid : the unmar- ried, male and female, lodged in separate quarters and were locked in at night; the day's work began and ended with catechism and prayer; each Indian had to work two hours a day on the pueblo farm for the support of the Church.
Yet there were advances made on the earlier treatment of the natives. Neither in Mexico and its dependent provinces, nor in Florida, was the native population worked to extinction as had been the case in the islands. The great mixture of races had much to do with bringing about the milder policy and the protective legislation. The importation of negro slaves too — though never a large feature in Mexican commerce — was another factor favorable to the survival of the Indians. The laws regarding slaves were decidedly more humane than those of the English and French colonies.
Still the missions, in spite of the zeal and devotion of the Franciscans who founded them, were in the end a failure. The Indian converts ran away, the Spanish soldiers were violent, the real rulers were far away, the wild Indians were increasingly fierce, the settlements were too far apart. Judgments of provincial governors were subject to review, if on military subjects, by the commandant at Chihuahua ; if on fiscal, by the intendant at San Luis Potosi; if on ecclesiastical, by the bishop at Nuevo Leon; if on civil, by the audiencia of Nueva Galicia : all on the other side of the Eio Grande.
At last, in 1794, the missions were all secularized.
136 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH. Spain Mistress of Texas, Louisiana and West Florida.
From 1763 to 1800 Louisiana also was under the rule of Spain and the energy of her Spanish gover- nor, Bernardo de Galvez, who took from the English Baton Bouge, Natchez, Mobile, and Pensacola, added to her dominions all of West Florida.
But this security for Spanish rule in the west was transient, for in 1800 Napoleon got Louisiana secretly ceded to France, that he might with San Domingo as his base of operations restore to France her colonial empire. But the insurrection in San Domingo, the need of money for his great wars, and the superiority of the English on the sea destroyed these plans and induced him in 1803 to sell the vast Louisiana territory to the United States.
Mexico and Florida Lost to Spain.
In 1810 the French occupation of Spain led to the insurrection of the Mexicans, and, although that was put down in Texas by the defeat of the revolutionists on the Medina in 1813, the struggle was renewed in Mexico by Eiego and Quiroga and her independence was won in 1821. Meantime in 1819 Spain had parted with Florida to the United States and when Mexico won her independence she claimed Texas along with the other provinces once Spanish and under the viceroy's rule as hers. The filibustering expeditions of Nolan, Magee, and Long had during this chaotic period intensified the hostility of the Mexicans to the Americans and, though many Amer- ican colonies were allowed to be planted in the almost empty land, the proclamation of an inde- pendent republic by Edwards was not calculated to allay their distrust. But for the anarchy that pre- vailed in Mexico, no doubt the Americans would all have been driven out, in spite of the fact that con-
THE SPANISH IN THE SOUTH. 137
fusion and disorder would then have reigned supreme in Texas.
Texas Lost to Mexico.
The Americans stayed, and the number of towns increased. But the government, whoever was at the head of it in the many successive revolutions, con- tinued hostile, until the situation became unbearable. The Americans at last rose in revolt, at first as sup- porters of the federal party, but in the end for an independent republic. This they achieved by the victory on the San Jacinto in 1836. Many Spaniards joined them in their cause and their descendants are today among the best of the citizens of Texas.
New Mexico Lost to Mexico.
Ten years later came annexation and the war between Mexico and the United States, which put New Mexico also into the Anglo-American republic. From this time neither Spain nor any of her former colonies held rule over any part of our Southland.
But there are countless monuments of the old Spanish dominion scattered through our land. Besides the houses in St. Augustine of coquina — a conglomerate of shells and shell-lime quarried when still soft from Anastasia Island — the old mission cathedrals and the adobe walls of San Antonio and elsewhere in Texas, there are the wild horses — marsh tackeys in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, mustangs in Texas and New Mexico — descendants of estrays from the Spanish horses or captures made by Apaches and Comanches. There are also many estates in Texas and in what were once the Floridas from Natchez to St. Augustine, the original title deeds of which are in Spanish. The Spanish land measure is the legal one in Texas, and there are many Spanish usages still in vogue, as the
138 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
stranger unfamiliar with the method of counting money by "bits" will soon experience.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Bancroft, Hubert H.: North American States and Texas (1889); Bourne, E. G.: The American Nation: Spain in America (1904); Brown, John Henry: History of Texas (1892); Campbell: Colonial Florida (1892); Chandler and Chitwood: Makers of American History (1904) ; Crane, William Carey: Life and Select Literary Eemains of Sam Houston (1884); de la Vega, Garcillasso: Histoire de la Conquete de la Floride (translated by P. Eichelet, 1711); Darby, William: Memoir of the Geography and Natural and Civil History of Florida (1821) ; Doyle, J. A.: History of the United States ("Freeman's Series," 1876); Dewees, W. B. : Letters from an Early Settler (1853); Edwards, David B.: History of Texas (1836); Elliott, Sarah Barnwell: Sam Houston (1900); Fairbanks, George R. : History of Florida (1871); Foote, Henry Stuart: Texas and the Texans (1841); Gayarre, Charles Arthur: History of the Spanish Domination in Louisiana (1854); Garrison, George P.: American Commonwealths: Texas (1903); Guffarel, Paul: Histoire de la Floride Francaise (1875); Howe, George: History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina (1870); Hamilton, Peter J. : Colonial Mobile (1897); Holly, Mary Austin: Texas (1836); Henry, W. S. : Campaign Sketches of the War with Mexico (1847); Irving, Theodore: The Conquest of Florida (1888); Jay, William: Review of the Mexican War (1849); Jones, Charles C., Jr.: History of Georgia (1883); Kennedy, William: Texas (1841); Lowery, Wood- bury: The Spanish Settlements in the United States: Florida (1905) ; Lanier, Sidney: Florida (1876); Lowry and McCardle: History of Mississippi (1891) ; Meek, A. B. : Romantic Passages in Southwestern History (1857); Morphis, J. M.: History of Texas (1874); Pickett, Albert James; History of Alabama (1851); Eeid, Samuel C., Jr.: Expeditions of the Texas Rangers (1848); Rye, William B. : Dis- covery and Conquest of Florida (1851); Ramsay, David: History of South Carolina (1858); Shipp, Barnard: De Soto and Florida (1881); Thrall, H. S.: History of Texas (1885); Yoakum, H.: History of Texas (1856) ; Annual Report of the American Historical Association (1903-06); La Florida: Cartas de Menendes de Aviles (1893).
CHARLES WOODWARD HUTSON,
Member American Historical Association.
THE GEKMANS IN
SOUTH.
139
CHAPTER IV. THE GERMANS IN THE SOUTH.
General Statistics.
'ROM 1820 to 1900 more than 5,010,000 natives of the German Empire came to the United States. Adding to this number those immigrants from Austria-Hungary, Russia, Switzerland, Luxemburg, Alsace-Lorraine and from other countries who were German by race and used German as their mother tongue, we may say that German immigration during that period amounted to about 7,000,000 persons. During the same period there arrived 6,893,489 English, Irish and Scotch immigrants, so that German immigration from 1820 to 1900 was about equal to the combined immigration from Great Britain.
Since 1850 the land of birth of the inhabitants of the United States has been ascertained through the United States Census, and we are thus enabled to show the distribution of the German element over the South.
INHABITANTS OF THE SOUTHERN STATES BORN IN THE GERMAN
EMPIRE.
|
Alabama ...... |
1850. 1,113 |
1860. 2,477 |
1870. 2,479 |
1880. 3,238 |
1890. 3,945 |
1900. 3 634 |
|
Arkansas Florida |
540 324 |
1,109 466 |
1,562 595 |
3,620 978 |
6,225 1,855 |
5,971 1,812 |
|
Georgia |
972 |
2,444 |
2,760 |
2,956 |
3,679 |
3,407 |
|
Louisiana |
17,887 |
24,215 |
18,912 |
17,475 |
14,625 |
11,839 |
|
Maryland M'ss'ssippi North Carolina. South Carolina. Tennessee Texas |
27,124 1,135 363 2,220 1,200 9.266 |
43,762 1,967 755 2,893 3,794 19,823 |
47,845 2,954 904 2,742 4,525 23,976 |
45,481 2,556 950 2,846 3,983 35,347 |
52,436 2,284 1,077 2,502 5,364 48 843 |
44,990 1,926 1,191 2,975 4,569 48 295 |
|
Virginia |
5,547 |
10,438 |
4,050 |
3,759 |
4 361 |
4 504 |
|
West Virginia . . |
6,231 |
7,029 |
7 292 |
6 537 |
||
South'n States. 67,691 114,143 119,535 130,218 154,488 140,750 United States. 583,774 1,276,075 1,690,287 1,966,742 2,784,894 2,666,990.
140 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
The general decrease in numbers for 1900 is due to the great falling off of German immigration result- ing from Germany's industrial prosperity and the expansion of her commerce. People do not emigrate in times of peace and plenty. German immigration, which in 1882 amounted to 250,630 persons, fell in 1900 to 18,507.
The South Atlantic states, most of which show now but a small number of Germans, had a large German immigration in the Eighteenth and first half of the Nineteenth century, when religious and politi- cal persecution and the effects of war drove tens of thousands over the sea. From Pennsylvania, too, many Germans came to the South Atlantic states and from there spread over Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. At the breaking out of the War of Independence, one-fifth of the whole population of the thirteen colonies and at least one-third of that of Pennsylvania were Germans.
German Settlements in the South.
Virginia. — Germans in Jamestown are mentioned in the reports of Captain John Smith. German car- penters who had been treated badly by the English settled among Chief Powhatan's Indians. The first list of planters contained German names. Augustin Herrmann, a German from Bohemia, was the founder of the tobacco export trade. Johannes Lederer "from the Alps" was the first explorer of the Allegheny mountains. His report was written in Latin (1669).
The first German settlement was made in 1714. Governor Spotswood having discovered iron ore on the Bapidan, caused German miners from Muesen in Westphalia to come to Virginia to build the first iron furnace. Their settlement was called "Ger- manna." Among these families we find the names
THE GERMANS IN THE SOUTH. 141
of Kemper and Fischbach. A descendant, Gen. James Lawson Kemper, was governor of Virginia, and Kemper county, Miss., is named after another descendant, the intrepid Col. Eeuben Kemper, who with his two brothers, Samuel and Nathan, had moved from Fauquier county, Va., to the vicinity of Pinkneyville, Miss., and died in Natchez in 1827. Peter Fischbach was governor of Arkansas.
During the War of Independence, the town of Woodstock in the Shenandoah Valley, a region set- tled by Germans, was the scene of an act of inspiring patriotism. Eev. Peter Muehlenberg, a German Lutheran minister, who in his youth had served with the dragoons in Germany, addressing his congrega- tion, said that there was a time to pray and to preach, but also one to fight. This time had come. "Therefore, whoever loves freedom and his new fatherland, let him follow me. ' ' Then taking off his ministerial robe, under which he wore the uniform of an officer, he buckled a sword about his waist and amidst indescribable enthusiasm, while drums were beating in front of his church, he enlisted 162 men in the revolutionary army. Kev. and Gen. Peter Muehlenberg left a brilliant military record and gained the intimate friendship of George Washington and Patrick Henry.
Maryland. — The first Germans in Maryland came from Pennsylvania. When the English took posses- sion of New Amsterdam (New York), many German Catholics emigrated from there to Maryland, and Frederic county became a German centre. The first German church in Baltimore was built in 1758. Dur- ing the War of Independence the Germans in Mary- land furnished a complete regiment and a company of artillery.
North Carolina.^&ix. hundred and fifty Germans
142 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
from the Palatinate and 1,500 Swiss under von Graffenried came in 1710 and founded New Berne. They were followed by the Moravian Brethren, who settled Rowan county between 1720 and 1725.
South Carolina. — Germans and Swiss under Purry founded Purryville in 1732 and introduced silk cul- ture. Many others followed them. During the War of Independence the Germans of Charleston founded the German "Fuesilier Compagnie," a military company still existing there.
Georgia. — German Mennonites and Herrnhuters settled on St. Simon's Island and near Savannah in 1731. In 1734 about 1,200 Protestants, driven out of the city of Salzburg, came under Baron von Reck and founded Ebenezer, thirty miles above Savannah,
Louisiana. — German immigration to Louisiana began at an early date. When, after 1717, agricul- ture was to be introduced on a grand scale, large concessions of land were given to such as obligated themselves to import the necessary labor to cultivate the soil, and President John Law of the ' ' Compagnie des Indes ' ' sent agents to the Ehine country to secure German peasants.
Ten thousand Germans trusted the promises of the Louisiana promoters and left their homes. Many succumbed to the hardships of the journey through France and still more died in the French ports, where they lay crowded together for months, were insufficiently fed and suffered from epidemic diseases. Six thousand sailed for Louisiana.*
Diseases contracted in port broke out anew after their departure and owing to the unsanitary condi- tions of the ships, the wretched fare, the polluted drinking water and the lack of medicines and dis- infectants, half of the immigrants died at sea. Of
* See Chevalier Soniat Dufossat's Synopsis.
THE GERMANS IN" THE SOOTH. 143
1,200 Germans and Swiss who left La Bochelle in January, 1721, but 200 arrived in Biloxi on the Gulf coast. Some vessels were captured by pirates and others stayed too long in San Domingo, where the half -starved people overindulged in fruit and were exposed to infection from tropical diseases.
In Biloxi, where the inhabitants relied for pro- visions on the vessels from France, a chronic state of semi-starvation existed, the provisions intended for the immigrants were taken away by force to feed the soldiers, and the immigrants had to stand in the burning sun up to their breasts in saltwater and catch oysters and crabs to live on. And as they had to remain there for many months because no boats were provided to take them to the concessions on the Mississippi, terrible epidemics raged, so that the priests, on account of their many duties attend- ing the sick and the dying, could no longer keep mortuary records.*
Finally some Germans reached Law's plantation at the mouth of the Arkansas Eiver, but only to hear that John Law was a bankrupt and that they were abandoned before they could make a crop. Indians assisted them. The Law people then still in the ports of France or on the sea were given lands on what is now called the ' ' German Coast, ' ' the parishes St. Charles and St. John the Baptist, above New Orleans; and there their fellow-sufferers from the Arkansas Eiver joined them and with them culti- vated the rich lowlands on both banks of the Mis- sissippi. Malaria and other diseases thinned their ranks, but their children survived and made a para- dise out of the German Coast. In olden times when New Orleans too had to rely for provisions on the ships from France, which often did not come in time,
* See declaration of a Capuchin in the Etat Civile of 1723,
144 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
the German pioneers rowed down the Mississippi with their products and more than once saved the city from severe famine. Their descendants, the ''Creoles of German descent," lived in prosperity and wealth down to the War of Secession. Then they shared the fate of the other Creoles.
Most Germans now living in Louisiana came be- tween 1845 and 1860. At that time the tide of immi- gration set west and, there being no transcontinental railroads at that time, many immigrant vessels came to New Orleans, whence the people went up the Mis- sissippi, the Ohio and the Missouri. In the calendar year 1854 nearly 40,000 Germans landed in New Orleans. Many remained there, but when the rail- roads from the eastern ports of the United States reached Cincinnati and St. Louis, the Mississippi route to the interior was abandoned. Thus immigra- tion via New Orleans declined. With the impending reestablishment of direct passenger steamship lines from German ports to New Orleans, a change for the better is confidently expected.
Texas. — The first Germans were brought to Texas by Baron von Bastrop, a German nobleman from Oldenburg. He came from Louisiana, where he had received a land grant in 1795, on which he settled some Germans and founded the town of Bastrop (Morehouse parish). This grant was later pur- chased by Aaron Burr. In Texas von Bastrop was given another grant, on which he settled Germans from Delmenhorst, Oldenburg, and founded another town of Bastrop (on the Colorado River) in 1823.
In the war for the liberation of Texas (1836) many Germans were among the American volunteers and a number of them fell in the battles of San Antonio, Goliad and San Jacinto. Some remained and from
THE GERMANS IN THE SOUTH. 145
this time on many individual Germans came from the United States.
The first German minister, the Rev. Ervendsberg from Illinois, came to Houston in 1839 and there founded the first German Protestant congregation.
About this time the President of the Republic of Texas was authorized by Congress to enter into con- tract with companies and individuals for the settling of large tracts of land in the western part, as indi- vidual colonists were not able to protect themselves there against the Indians.
One of these contractors was Henry Castro, who brought 2,134 colonists between the years 1842 and 1847, mostly Germans from Wurtemburg, Baden, Rhenish Prussia, Alsace and Switzerland, and founded the town of Castroville on Medina Creek, west of San Antonio.
In 1844 the "Mainzer Adelsverein, " an associ- ation of German princes and nobles, acquired the Fischer & Miller grant, which began at the confluence of the Llano and the Colorado rivers (eighty miles north of San Antonio) and extended up both rivers. There they wished so to mass German immigrants that these would preserve their language and their nationality, create new markets for German indus- tries and help develop German maritime enterprises.
Prince Karl zu Solms Braunfels, the commissary- general of the association, began operations by pur- chasing Powderhorn Bay at Indian Point, near Port Lavaca, for a landing place and permanent camp, and called it ' ' Karlshafen. " There the first 150 German families arrived about Christmas, 1844, and started for Fischer's grant via Victoria, Gonzales and Seguin. On Good Friday, 1845, they reached the ford of the Guadalupe River, where the prince had bought part of the Veramondi league. There
Vol. 10—10
146 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
they founded the town of "Neu Braunfels," named for the prince's ancestral castle. A second troop arrived there in June. Each man was given a town lot and a ten acre farm.
Then trouble began. Improvident expenses by the prince, dishonesty on the part of agents on both sides of the ocean and costs in excess of calculations had reduced the funds of the association, and remittances grew smaller and smaller. Continuous rains made roads and rivers impassable for months, lack of shelter for the ever increasing multitude of new arrivals on the coast, malarial fever and dysentery- all seemed to combine against the enterprise. Finally when the weather improved the war between the United States and Mexico broke out, all draught animals, cattle and vehicles were bought up for the army and prices for necessaries rose very high.
On the coast 1,000 immigrants died, many perished on the road to the interior and all arrived in Neu Braunfels sick and miserable. Three hundred died there. Some of the young men formed military companies and joined the American army and others went to San Antonio, the base for part of the United States forces, where there was work for all who applied.
In order to avoid a protracted stay in Neu Braun- fels, another advance in the direction of Fischer's grant was determined upon and 10,000 acres were purchased on the Paternales Kiver, where, on the 8th of May, 1846, 120 men founded "Friedrichs- burg, ' ' so named after Prince Frederick of Prussia, who was a member of the association.
Then Herr von Meusebach, the successor of the prince, and Dr. Eemer ventured an expedition into the unknown regions of Fischer's grant, the hunting grounds of the wild Comanches, and succeeded in
THE GEBMANS IN THE SOUTH. 14?
making a treaty of friendship with the Indians. This was followed by the founding of German settle- ments on the north side of the Llano : Castell, Bet- tina, Leiningen and Schoenberg, all on Fischer's grant, which was at last reached — in 1847. It was 220 miles from the coast.
In 1848 the association broke up after bringing over 6,000 Germans to Texas.
Although the conditions under which the grant had been given — the settling of a stipulated number of people in a specified time — had not been fulfilled, the legislature of Texas gave each head of a family 460 acres of land and each single man 320 ; and from 1848 to 1854 the general land office issued 3,492 certificates for Fischer's grant alone and 543 for Castro's grant.
After 1848, the year of the revolution in Germany, thousands of political refugees, all men of education and high ideals, came to America, and many settled in Texas. They were called "The Forty-eighters " or the "Latin farmers." They became the leaders of their people. San Antonio, Sisterdale and Comfort were their centres.
Since then an uninterrupted stream of German immigration has spread over Texas, which in 1900 had 48,295 inhabitants born in Germany. If we consider also that their descendants preserved the language of their parents we can judge the impor- tance of the German element in Texas. There are at present twenty-eight German weekly newspapers in the state and one excellent daily, the Freie Presse fuer Texas, in San Antonio.
West Virginia. — Oppression of the English High Church and large land owners drove many Germans from their Pennsylvania and Virginia homesteads to the mountain region. Part of West Virginia was
148 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
also settled by the German Shenandoah Valley immi- gration. A German named Eobert Harper (Har- per's Ferry) located there in 1734. Jacob Hite (Haid) founded Legtown and Thomas Scheppert Shephardstown The Waggeners and Faulkners, who distinguished themselves in the French and Indian War and also during the War of Indepen- dence, came to Berkeley county. The first settle- ments in the Panhandle were made by Germans.
In 1758, Thomas Decker established a German set- tlement on Decker's Creek, but all were murdered by the savages. In the horrible massacre at Fort Sey- bert in May, 1758, the Germans suffered the same fate. In 1776 all the Germans who had settled in Tucker county were murdered by the Indians, as was also a German settlement on Dunkart's Creek in 1779. Owing to this constant warfare the early Germans of this mountain region became Indian hunters. The most celebrated of them was Ludwig Wetzel, after whom Wetzel county is named. He alone took more than thirty scalps of warriors to avenge the death of his father.
The city of Wheeling was laid out on the land of Col. Ebenezer Zahn, a German, and on the island of Wheeling, "Zane's Island," descendants of the original Zahn still carry on the culture of the grape- vine with excellent results.
After the Revolutionary War Gen. George Wash- ington, who desired German settlers for his extensive lands, invited the German prisoners of war to remain in the New World and a very large number of them accepted his proposal and built their cabins in Greenbrier, Pocahontas, Nicholas, Fayette and Kanawha counties.
Alabama. — Germans and their descendants from Georgia, Virginia and the Carolinas spread over the
THE GERMANS IN THE SOUTH. 149
northern part of Alabama. Mobile had at an early date quite a large number of Germans, who, as a rule, came via New Orleans. About 1870 a German named Cullmann founded the German colony Cull- mann, which proved very successful and showed what German farmers can do on comparatively poor land and without negro labor, which is considered indispensable by so many Southern people. By a recent census Cullmann 's colony has now 1,999 white inhabitants and but a single negro. John G. Cullmann, who was born in Bavaria in 1823, died in 1895. His colony has now two weekly papers, two banks, a public school and a high school, churches of several denominations, the St. Bernhard Catholic College of the Benedictine Fathers, a convent and school of the Sisters of Charity and a handsome Odd Fellows' Home, built of concrete which will be fin- ished in a few months and will cost $50,000. About the year 1900 Germans from Chicago founded a German colony on Perdido Bay, in the southeast corner of the state, which has now about 300 Ger- man families. The development of the iron region around Birmingham brought many Germans as in- dustrial workers to Alabama.
Tennessee. — Nashville and Memphis had already in the forties of the last century a large German population. In 1845 Germans founded the town of Wartburg, in East Tennessee, which, in 1848, had 800 German inhabitants. During the War of Seces- sion this colony suffered to some extent, but since then German immigration has revived.
Arkansas. — In 1833 an emigration society was formed in the city of Worms, Germany, which sent a colony of sixty German families, altogether 160 persons, to Arkansas. Their leader was the Kev. Klingenhoefer, who had been persecuted in Germany on account of his liberal views. This colony soon
150 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
dissolved, some of the members going to Illinois, but Eev. Klingenhoefer remained and settled near Little Eock.
Mississippi. — Natchez and Vicksburg, the two com- mercial centres of the state, being situated on the Mississippi Eiver, received large German colonies at the time when this river was the immigrant route GO the interior. In Natchez a German literary and reading club was founded in 1839 by Gen. John Anton Quitmann, the son of Dr. Friedrich Quitmann, a German Protestant minister in Ehinebeck, N. Y. General Quitmann came to Natchez in 1823 and rose to the highest offices of the state. He was a member of the state legislature, president of the Senate, member of the United States Congress, justice of the Supreme Court of the state, and governor. He fought in the war for the liberation of Texas, was made major-general in the Mexican War, and was voted a sword of honor by Congress for bravery in the battle of Monterey. In Congress he was one of the most ardent supporters of the cause of Cuban liberty.
On the Gulf coast of the state of Mississippi numerous descendants are found of those Germans who came to Louisiana between 1720 and 1730. Among them are the descendants of Hugo Brnestus Krebs, of Neumagen, who died about 1776 and left fourteen grown children. The old Krebs homestead near Scranton is still occupied by one of the de- scendants of Hugo Ernestus Krebs.
J. HANNO DEILER,
Professor Emeritus of German in the Tulane University of Louisiana.
THE JEW IN THE SOUTH. 151
CHAPTER V. THE JEWS IN THE SOUTH.
'N writing of the Jew in "The South in the Building of the Nation," one is confronted at the outset with a serious difficulty. Not that the Jew has not made a significant addi- tion to national progress and achievement, for his material contribution is everywhere self-evident. Nor, furthermore, that he has not likewise aided in the development of those ideals which we term "American," for on that side, too, the Jew must be recognized as a prominent factor by all familiar with his history. But the Jew no sooner settled in this country than he at once identified himself with its general interests, so that what he has done can no longer be distinguished as specifically Jewish. The American Jew, in giving his support to every uplifting movement, has given it, not as a Jew, but as an American. The thesis, therefore, resolves itself into an enumeration of some of the things accomplished by men of Jewish birth or descent, and the limits of this article will permit of only the briefest indication of the activities of the Jew in the South.
Jewish Record in Southern History.
Reviewing the question historically then, it is on record that Jews first settled in America in 1654. It was not long before they were to be found in all of the original colonies, and before the end of the Seventeenth century individual Jews were scattered throughout the South.
The Northern colonies were not liberal, and when
152 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
South Carolina was settled, in 1670, with Locke's tolerant constitution as the rule of government— the Jews being specifically mentioned therein — it is not surprising that the Jew, in common with the per- secuted of other peoples, should have gone there to seek a home where he might worship God as his conscience dictated. The Jews who settled in South Carolina came principally from London, some from New Amsterdam and some from the West Indies. The toleration of South Carolina attracted them. So did its commercial opportunities. It was the only colony where the Jew practically never suffered any civil or religious disabilities. A Jew acted as inter- preter to Governor Archdale in 1695, and several Jews were naturalized under the Act of 1696-97. Jews are mentioned as taking part in politics as early as 1703, and by the year 1750 they formed in the population a significant element, including sev- eral merchants of large means, with a regular com- munal organization. In 1800, or soon thereafter, the Charleston community was the largest, the wealthiest and the most cultured community of Jews in America.
It has already been said that most of the Jews who settled in South Carolina came from England. England was not a congenial soil for the Jews in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries. In the mid- dle of the Eighteenth century, Picciotto tells us, there were in England from a hundred and fifty to two hundred rich Jewish families, two-thirds of whom were Spanish and Portuguese. In addition were about five times as many families who verged on pauperism. And, while the leading financiers were Jews and while prominent merchants among the Jews rivalled the foremost English houses in the city of London, socially Jews were barely tolerated,
THE JEW IN THE SOUTH. 153
and politically they labored under disabilities until the year 1853. Little wonder that South Carolina attracted them !
These early immigrants to South Carolina were for the most part, though not entirely, originally Spanish and Portuguese Jews, descendants of vic- tims of the Inquisition. They were a people of splendid traditions, ''whose ancestors had ban- queted with sovereigns and held the purse-strings of kings." They had come from a land where learn- ing flourished, where culture was of the highest, and where their forefathers had experienced the golden age of their history. They were a people of fine bearing, and from the beginning won recogni- tion for their integrity and business ability. Com- mercially, they were important, their knowledge of foreign languages, as well as their connections with England, Holland, Jamaica, Barbadoes and the Spanish South American colonies making them val- uable intermediaries of trade. Charleston possessed numerous Jewish ship-owners whose vessels traded with England and the West Indies. The indigo industry, after rice the largest source of revenue to the province, received its greatest impetus through Moses Lindo, an English Jew who settled in Charles Town in 1757, and who worked indefatigably to pro- mote the welfare of the province till his death in 1774. Socially, the Jews mingled on equal terms with the best people in the province.
Georgia was colonized in 1733, and the arrival of forty Jews in the second vessel, which reached Savannah in July, 1733, was almost contemporane- ous with that of the settlers first to land. Savannah was the only place in the South to which the Jews came as a colony. They were, nearly all of them, Jews who were natives of Portugal, but had stayed
154 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
for a brief period in London. It would seem that they came at their own expense and paid for the allotments of land made to them. In 1733, the Jews constituted one-third of the entire population of Savannah.
As in South Carolina, they rendered good service to the colony. The culture of the grape was intro- duced by Abraham de Lyon, who had been a vineron in Portugal, and he would doubtless have succeeded in his enterprise but for the bad faith of Oglethorpe. Silk culture, too, was undertaken by the Jewish set- tlers, Joseph Ottolenghi, a Jew by birth, being sent over in 1751 to supervise the industry. The illiberal policy of the Trustees caused an exodus from Sa- vannah in 1741, nearly all the Jews leaving the colony. Many of them, however, returned soon after 1750. They played their part in commerce, in spite of the fact that the Trustees did not always act fairly by them. It was, indeed, largely due to the industry of the Jews that the colony attained any success. Their social and charitable character- istics are referred to in the records of the Salz- burgers, and the value of Dr. Nunez as a physician is likewise mentioned. As in the neighboring col- ony, the Jews mingled freely with their neighbors.
Prior to 1800, few Jews were to be found outside of Charleston and Savannah. The desire to observe their religion after the manner of their fathers was largely the reason of this. So, in the early days, when their numbers were few, the Jews did not scatter far from organized communities. After 1800, the Jews in the South rapidly increased. Their long and uninterrupted felicitous career had borne goodly fruit, and nowhere else in ante-bellum days could be found so many Jews prominent in civil and political life. Already prior to 1800 they
THE JEW IN THE SOUTH. 155
were members of the state legislatures, and from that time till 1860 the civic offices held by them would make a formidable list. They are represented in the National Senate and House of Representa- tives, and frequently in the state legislatures, and one is in the consular service. Among them are statesmen, jurists, eminent lawyers, publicists, dramatists, educators, physicians, artists and in- ventors, many of whom attained recognition on both sides of the Atlantic.
In a word, the Jews of the ante-bellum South have made eminent contributions to art, to science and to literature. And they have not acted as a separate people in the great political movements that have agitated the South; they have taken opposing sides on every question. The institution of slavery, for instance, had no more vigorous defender than Judah P. Benjamin and no more vigorous opponent than Solomon Heydenfeldt, of Alabama. They identified themselves with the South, they were prominent in commerce, helped to develop railroads and water- ways, and many of the South 's public utilities were largely made possible by Jewish capital. They par- ticipated in the dangers of frontier life, blazing the path for civilization in the wilderness. The Indian trader, "Old Mordecai," founded the city of Mont- gomery and was the first to plant cotton in Ala- bama. Henry De Castro colonized more than 5,000 emigrants in Texas, and Jacob de Cordova rendered valuable service to that state by making its resources known to the outside world.
The Jew as a Patriot.
It has been said that equal laws and equal rights are the best guarantees of loyalty and love of coun- try. The Jew in the South is an illustration of this
156 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
truth. In every war of this country he has fur- nished more than his share of men and given liber- ally of his substance. Two Virginia Jews accom- panied Washington in his expedition across the Alle- ghany Mountains in 1754. A Jew of Charles Town held a commission in the Cherokee War of 1760-61. One of the most trusted leaders of the Revolution in South Carolina was Francis Salvador. Incom- plete as the records are, the names of thirty-four Jews of South Carolina have come down as having served the cause of independence. Georgia, with its small Jewish population, furnished several patriots, and the names of Jews from other Southern states are on record. In the War of 1812, in the Texan War of 1836, in the Florida War of 1846 and in the Mexican War the Jews of the South furnished far more than their proportion in the field. The War between the States, however, furnished the best example of Jewish patriotism. The Jews of the South gave to the Confederacy a towering figure in Judah P. Benjamin, its attorney-general, secretary of war and secretary of state ; its first surgeon-gen- eral and its first quartermaster-general. A Charles- ton Jew made the largest money contribution to the cause, and the first contribution in response to the appeal of the surgeon-general came from Jewish women of Charleston. The Hon. Simon Wolf in his notable book has collected the names of 1,999 Jewish soldiers who saw service in the field. Large as this number is, it falls far short of the actual count of those who fought for the right as they saw it. In the recent Spanish- American War, 454 Jews of the South volunteered their services.
So much, then, for the Jew of the South in peace and in war. When we consider that the entire Jewish population in the United States in 1818 was
THE JEW IN THE SOUTH. 157
only 3,000, and but 6,000 in 1826, we can but marvel at the influence which the Jews of the South have exercised. They have given the nation notable leaders, eminent lawyers, distinguished philanthro- pists, and a host of men who have added luster to every profession. In a word, the Jew has here reached the acme of his possibilities.
The Jew as a Citizen.
Since the War of Secession, communities have sprung up everywhere in the wake of the tides of immigration that have followed upon European per- secutions. The South, for economic reasons, has not received as many of the newcomers as the North, but those who have gone there have everywhere rendered good account of themselves, the children of emigrants being often found among its most prominent citizens. The experiment of civil and religious equality has been amply justified, and the Jew has shown himself worthy of the liberty that has here been accorded him.
The Jew in the Old South was in all respects a genuine Southron. In his unrestricted social inter- course he has been often tempted to stray from his own people. Nowhere else has there been so much intermarriage. An enormous strain of Jewish blood is everywhere apparent, and were actual figures given they would be denied credence. The Jew in the New South is typical of the New South, char- acterized as it is by intense commercialism. In business he is so successful that, according to a recent estimate, from 70 to 80 per cent, of the capital invested in several important industries in the larger cities is Jewish money.
But the Jew is more than a mere trader. There are to-day scattered through the South about 127,000
158 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
Jews. They are to be found in every city, village and hamlet, striving for success and winning it, often under the most adverse conditions, by virtue of their industry, thrift and sobriety. They are foremost in all public movements, patriotic and law-abiding, cosmopolitan in their charities, and permitting none of their own people to become a burden upon the state. To the statistics of crime their contribution is so small as to be practically negligible. If a nation is made by its good citizens, then the Jews of the South are entitled to a foremost place in helping this great nation to its larger destiny.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Elzas, B. A.: The Jews of South Carolina from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (Philadelphia, 1905); Wolf, Simon: The American Jew as Patriot, Soldier and Citizen (Philadel- phia, 1895) ; Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society (16 vols.); The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, 1901-5).
BAENETT A. ELZAS,
Babbi of K. K. Beth Elohim, Charleston, S. C.
CHAPTER VI. THE INDIAN IN THE SOUTH.
^
' 0 give an historical outline of the Southern Indians within the space allotted to me is necessarily to confine myself to the merest sketch, and I shall not undertake to include the Indians of the Southwest, whose characteristic culture, life and wars form an entirely distinct chapter in history.
At the earliest period of which we have any knowl- edge, the following tribes inhabited the Southern states from Virginia south and west to the Missis-
THE INDIAN IN THE SOUTH. 159
sippi River, namely: The Powliatan Confederacy, Manahoacs, Monacans, Catawbas, Shawanees, Cher- okees, Seminoles, Creeks, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Yazoos or Natchez. The first four named occupied mainly what is now Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas. The Shawanees dwelt in parts of West Virginia, Tennessee, and westward into Kentucky and Ohio. The Cherokees occupied a broad stretch of country, including the western part of North Carolina, northern Georgia, Alabama and Missis- sippi, while the Creeks, a powerful tribe coming from the West and originally called Muskogees, settled in Mississippi, advanced eastward as far as middle Ala- bama and even into Georgia and northward into Tennessee. The Choctaws lived in northern Missis- sippi and Tennessee, and the Yazoos along the Mis- sissippi Eiver in the state of that name, also in east- ern Arkansas. The Chickasaws occupied Louisiana and Alabama ; the Seminoles, who were really a ren- egade branch of the Creeks, settled in southern Georgia and finally removed to Florida. Such were the principal Southern tribes and their original habi- tat so far as is known, although there were undoubt- edly pre-historic migrations, but there were and still are numerous smaller bands and sub-bands having various local names or nick-names, thus creating fre- quent confusion.
No other North American Indians have been situ- ated precisely as these were, from the fact that they were pressed on the southwest by the French and Spanish, on the north and northeast by the English, and thus practically surrounded on three sides by conquering nations. The natural boundaries of their country, the seacoast, the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, became the highways of exploration and trade.
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The Powhataiis.
The tribe that played the greatest part in the his- tory of the early settlements in Virginia were the Powhatans, led most effectively not by the chief of that name, but by his war-like brother Opechan- chanough, who opposed the invaders with energy.
The influence of Powhatan was probably over- estimated by the English, as there is nothing to show that he possessed more power than the majority of chiefs, but Opechanchanough generaled both the important massacres in Virginia, those of 1622 and 1644, and was probably the first Indian to strike an effective blow at the whites. Powhatan 's name lives in history chiefly by reason of his capture of Capt. John Smith and the pretty story of his daughter Pocahontas, her friendship for the English and sub- sequent marriage with Kolfe.
Most of these tribes were at enmity with one another previous to the period of first settlements and until the formation of confederacies among themselves, of which the most important was the Creek Confederacy. The Yazoos were entirely exter- minated by the French in 1730, and the Tuscaroras, who were a branch of the Powhatans, united with the Six Nations of New York. The Catawbas became much demoralized by early contact with the whites and finally perished or were absorbed by the Creeks. The Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws and Choctaws.
We shall now deal with what were on the whole the most progressive Indians of our country, the Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws and Choctaws. These people, who were already living in permanent vil- lages— the Cherokees indeed had a fairly well- defined government of seven mother-towns and held considerable cultivated land — received the whites for the most part with friendship and opened their coun-
THE INDIAN IN THE SOUTH. 161
try to trade. Even though DeSoto had slaughtered many while on his voyages of exploration, the early voyageurs were able to visit and trade with them in perfect safety. Friendly treaties were made with each band, which were kept in every particular by the Indians, until they had been broken by the whites. The first treaty by which they ceded any land was the Hopewell treaty of 1786.
During the French and Indian wars the Cherokees and Creeks assisted the Americans in their expedi- tions, and by their knowledge of the country and their skill in scouting saved Braddock's command from total destruction in 1756. Several of these Indian soldiers on their way home were murdered by some misguided and over-zealous white savages on the Virginia frontier, doubtless inspired by the fact that Virginia had already offered a bounty for Indian scalps, although it is not to be supposed that she intended to include those of her allies. These outrages led to the first real outbreak of the Chero- kees, and hindered the settlement of Georgia for several years, although if it had not been for the rash action of Governor Littleton, of Georgia, in holding a number of chiefs as hostages and finally massacring them, serious results might have been averted. When Montgomery finally went out against them he was defeated by the Indians, under the lead- ership of their great war-chief, Ockonostota. On the other hand, Attackullakulla, a friendly chief and a diplomat, wisely used his influence in favor of peace, but without immediate success. However, he distin- guished himself by saving the life of Captain Stew- art, when captured by the Indians. Not until after a second and successful expedition had been sent against them did the Cherokees sue for peace in 1761.
There was no serious uprising from this time until
Vol. 10—11
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after the Creek Confederacy, including the Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws and Choctaws, had been formed early in the Nineteenth century. One of the first laws passed by the new government was one forbidding the introduction of ardent spirits. The Indians possessed fruit orchards and large fields of grain, and had made considerable progress in useful arts. By 1826 the Cherokees had a written language, of which the alphabet was invented by that remark- able native genius, George Gist, or Sequoyah.
About the year 1812 the settlers began to encroach upon their homes and fields ; murders of Indians by whites were frequent, without just cause or repara- tion made, and former friendship seemed forgotten. However, they refrained from retaliation until the news of British success at Maiden, the preaching of the Shawanee prophet, and the efforts of Tecumseh to form a powerful Indian nation, something after the manner of Pontiac in the northwest, gave them impetus and courage to strike a blow against the invaders.
They rose under the leadership of Weatherford, a remarkably gifted and eloquent mixed-blood, who has been called "the corner-stone of the Creek Con- federacy." An attack was made upon Fort Mimm, Ala., in 1813, and nearly all the 275 persons in the garrison were massacred. This act aroused the gov- ernment to send General Jackson with 2,000 men against the Indians, and he subdued them after a series of bloody battles. Thus was overthrown the power of the Creek Confederacy and again the Indians were forced to sue for peace.
As has been the case in nearly all Indian wars, there was a party friendly to the whites, in this instance led by another brilliant man of mixed blood, General Mclntosh. It is only fair to say that
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Jackson would have fared worse than he did had it not been for the assistance of Mclntosh and his men, who acted as scouts and guides, and in fact fought bravely against their own people.
The government was now bent upon forcing the Indians westward or crowding them into a much smaller territory. Commissioners sent to them for the purpose of negotiating a treaty were baffled by a general opposition to any cession of land. In their determination to succeed by fair or unfair means, the commissioners bribed Mclntosh, and he in turn attempted to buy out other influential men. The attempt failed, and only about one-tenth of the rep- resentatives signed, but the treaty was nevertheless accepted as valid. Thus Mclntosh helped to take from his nation 10,000,000 acres, although they did not realize this until the settlers began to press them more closely ; and when they learned that the Amer- ican government held this fraudulent treaty valid, and that they could not break it, they took and exe- cuted both Mclntosh and his brother-in-law, whose part in the wrong had been discovered and exposed.
The Seminoles.
Meanwhile, in 1816 or 1817 the northern Seminoles had been similarly pushed, and General Jackson was sent against them also. After peace had been effected, the Indians were ousted from their homes and fine fields and banished to some desert pine lands and swamps near the west coast of Florida. How- ever, they were glad to escape the close proximity of the frontiersmen who had brought so much suf- fering upon them.
From this time on the development of the South was more rapid, and the colonists appealed to the general government to remove the Indians further
164 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
west. In 1825 a second treaty was made with the Creeks which provided for their removal west of the Mississippi Eiver, but only a few Cherokees actually left, as the rest clung to their old homes. There civilization encroached more and more closely upon them, and wrongs were committed, doubtless, on both sides, but the Indian was always the chief sufferer. A few of the confederated tribes joined the Seminoles in Florida, and a refuge was also found there by negro fugitives and runaway slaves, to the number of nearly 1,000, thus increasing the population of the Seminoles.
About the year 1835 there was considerable white emigration into Florida, and the whites, who were the aggressors, began as usual to complain of the Indians. A treaty was forced upon them by which they too were to exchange their homes for unknown territory in the west, but this treaty was signed only by a few friendly chiefs and their followers, being opposed by the leading chief, Micanopy, reinforced by the great war-chief, Osceola. In fact, Osceola was the backbone of the opposition. Their agent, General Thompson, who had spared no means to coerce them into signing, quarreled with Osceola and caused him to be imprisoned, after which he finally signed. But it appeared that this was merely a ruse to cover his purpose of revenge.
In this treaty it was provided that the Indians' homes should be abandoned and their stock sold. They were given a limited time in which to effect this ; the time had now expired and the agent ordered them to bring in their stock to be sold at public auc- tion. This they declined to do, and he soon found that they did not consider the treaty binding and did not intend to carry it into effect.
Meanwhile Osceola had collected an army and
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advanced upon the settlers. Major Dade was sent to an outpost and there attacked and his command destroyed to a man. Several serious battles fol- lowed, in which both sides suffered, but the end was inevitable. The Seminoles finally submitted and were removed.
Soon after this the Creeks again broke out and were subdued and removed to the Indian Territory. In their new home the same tribes formed their con- federacy anew, including the Seminoles, and they have since been known as the Five Civilized Nations. They have advanced remarkably in civilization, building schools and colleges and forming a govern- ment of their own after the pattern of the govern- ment of the United States, which remained in force until the admission into the Union of the new state of Oklahoma. (See, also, the article on THE INDIAN PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH, in Volume IV.).
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Bruce: Indians in the South and Economic His- tory of Virginia in the 17th Century; Bullock: Virginia; Drake: Indian Wars; Howe: Historical Collections of Virginia; Howison, E. R. : History of Virginia; Irving: Conquest of Florida; Jackson, H. H. : A Century of Dishonor; McCall: History of Georgia; McCardy: South Carolina Under the Royal Government; Ramsey: History of South Carolina; Wheeler: History of North Carolina; Williams: History of Florida; Wood, N. B. : Lives of Famous Indian Chiefs; Works of Captain John Smith; Hand-Book of American Indians, and other Reports of the Ethnological Bureau, Washing- ton, D.C.
CHARLES ALEXANDER EASTMAN (Ohiyesa),
Author Indian Boyhood, Old Indian Days, etc.
166 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER VII. THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH.
American Negro Origins.
ROBABLY less is known of the life history of the negro than of any other element in our population. As a governmental activ- ity American ethnology has largely confined itself to the Indian, and private research has only touched the surface of negro ethnology. The United States contains the largest body of negroes which has ever lived within historic times outside the African continent, yet the museums of England and Germany contain collections illustrative of native negro life which are incomparably superior to anything we have in this country. Popularly speaking, so little is known by our people of the negro's native life that we have come to think of them as a people without an ancestral history, and such knowledge as the mass of Americans have has been so distorted as to be worth but little. It is based upon study which until very recent times has been largely confined to a search for evidence in support of one side or the other of the ancient and bootless controversy over the question of the rela- tive positions in the human scale of the Caucasian and the Negro.
There is a great deal of truth in Sir Harry John- ston's remark that "The negro, more than any other human type, has been marked out by his mental and physical characteristics as the servant of other races." He adds that there are exceptions to the rule, and that the least divergence from the negro
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stock in an upward direction, as in the case of the Gallas and Somalis, is characterized by greater hos- tility to the slavery relation. This matter of diver- gence from the true negro type touches the root of the study of American negro tribal stocks. The "true negro" was found in a rather limited area, extending along the west coast for about fifteen degrees north from the equator. But this territory could not have supplied the trade after it began to assume the character and proportions of a legiti- mate international traffic. That traffic tended at once both to destroy and to disperse the coast popu- lation. But it did more. It went out into the inte- rior and extended its ramifications south of the equator and across the continent, almost, if not quite, to the eastern coast. Brazil drew her main supply from Portuguese West Africa, developing a trade which extended as far below the equator as that of North America extended above it. In addition to these sources of the traffic, other trad- ing routes drew also on the East coast and on Madagascar.
The common conception which regards all negroes as of a common African ancestry is, therefore, wholly erroneous. It is probable, on the contrary, that the so-called American negro represents a blended type which contains a greater intermixture of different stocks than any other element of our population. Sierra Leone owed its inception as a colony for liberated slaves to the removal there of a number of negroes from England, who were eman- cipated by Lord Mansfield's decision in the Somer- sett case in 1772. There were at the time between 12,000 and 20,000 negro slaves in England. The colony developed into a place of refuge for all the negroes set free from captured slavers after the
168 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
traffic became illegal. It thus became an assembling ground for negroes from all parts of Africa which supplied slaves to the markets of the world, and its population afforded the best possible field for illus- trating the number and diversity of these tribal types. In the middle of the past century the labors of an English missionary in Sierra Leone, the Rev. S. W. Koelle, showed that the population of the col- ony embraced negroes speaking two hundred differ- ent dialects, and differing in tribal habits, customs and practices. We have studied the different char- acteristics of different American Indian tribes, and no one would put in the same class the warlike Sioux and the degraded "Digger." Yet we ignore differences equally as pronounced among negroes.
There is, of course, to be considered the argument that the intermixing of negro stocks has progressed so far in this country that we now have a blended product in which original differences have become indistinguishable. The value of a knowledge of the component elements of this stock does not wholly depend upon the degree to which such original ele- ments have or have not fused in the mass. The con- tradictory and puzzling features which a study of the American negro presents are not founded upon the condition and characteristics of the masses of the race. They arise, rather, from the numerous instances of individuals who differ from the masses, and who in themselves seem to invalidate conclu- sions based upon observation of the race as a whole. It is only when we know the composition of the mass, and realize that in it, or upon its outskirts, are many individuals who though commonly identified with the race are really not negroes in racial herit- age, that we can properly appraise these exceptional cases in their relation to the larger group. Such
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tribes as could not be enslaved successfully, as the Manyema of the upper Congo, were adopted as allies by Arab traders, and became themselves slave traders and raiders of the most inveterate and relentless character. The Hausas and Fulahs of the Egyptian Sudan were extensive owners of and dealers in negro slaves, and they would resent as quickly as a white man an attempt to identify them with negroes. But the Arab dealer was no respecter of persons, and when opportunity offered he did not hesitate to sell to the white slaver his allies of a different stock, along with the negroes whom he had bought from them. In this and other ways many hundreds, probably many thousands, of individuals of superior native tribes, persons who in Africa would be differentiated from the negro, found their way into American slavery. Another element in the so-called negro population of America was fur- nished by the natives of Madagascar. These people are not negro, but Malay in origin, and to this day thousands of their descendants may be recognized by their perfectly straight hair, rather high noses and Indian type of complexion. At home they were known as ''Malagasy," and the writer has found numerous individuals of this strain who had some vague, traditional knowledge of their origin, usually indicated in the persistence of their original desig- nation, under some such corrupt form as "Molly- gaster" or " Molly glaster."
The negro proper, to quote again from Sir Harry Johnston, "is in general a born slave. He is pos- sessed of great physical strength, docility, cheerful- ness of disposition, a short memory for sorrows and cruelties, and an easily aroused" [and I should add easily dissipated] "gratitude for kindness and just dealing. He does not suffer from homesickness to
170 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
the overbearing extent that afflicts other peoples torn from their homes, and, provided he is well fed, he is easily made happy." The description applies fairly well to the great mass of negroes who found r way into the slave markets of the world. It was true of those on the West Coast who were sent to America and the West Indies, and likewise of those farther east who were distributed to other markets through the island of Zanzibar, — probably the greatest slave clearing-house of the modern world. It held good with those who were enslaved by their neighbors the Hausas, and with those who were collected in the Sudan and carried north and east by Arab traders overland to Morocco, Algeria and Egypt. But it is probable that every slave cara- van which set out across the desert, and every slave ship which set out across the sea, had in its comple- ment some individuals who did not answer to this description, — some who were not docile or cheerful, who were not blessed with short memories for wrongs, who were not happy even when well fed. "We may, then, state the case of our negro popula- tion after this wise: It is a mass of people pos- sessing racial characteristics which enabled it to submit to slavery with a maximum degree of cheer- fulness, and without the chafing of other races under restraint, — which characteristics have also enabled it to accommodate itself to its anomalous status in the body of American people since emancipation. But there has always been in this mass a number of individuals who differed from the great bulk of the slave population in respect to native capacity and general characteristics, and who differ in equal degree from the mass of that population under free- dom, Any generalization which may be made as to
THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH. 171
the mass of this population is likely to fail when applied to these individual types.
The early laws of some of the colonies recognized the fact that other than negroes had been brought from Africa into America, and * ' Moors, " or * ' black- amoors, ' ' were sometimes exempted in specific terms from the operation of statutes provided for negro slaves. There were many instances of so-called "Moors" who achieved considerable local distinc- tion, though it is always possible that these were Fulahs or members of other non-negro tribes. One of the earliest of these was the case of "Job," who was a slave in Maryland. It was found that he was an educated man, with a mastery of Arabic, and Oglethorpe was instrumental in securing his liberty and sending him to London in 1731. A somewhat similar case was that of Abdul Bahaman, a "Moor- ish" slave in Mississippi in the early part of the Nineteenth century. There was also Omeroh, in South Carolina, and "Prince Hannibal," in Vir- ginia, at much later dates. The largest group of persons of African descent who claim not to be negroes, and who assert a superiority to the latter, are the so-called "Moors" of Delaware. These people have endeavored to hold themselves aloof from the negroes about them, and in a measure have succeeded in doing so. One of their racial preju- dices is against negro teachers in the public schools allotted them, a prejudice which is usually respected by assigning them mulatto instructors.
The mention of mulattoes suggests the last, and a most important, element in our polyglot negro population. It is important from whatever point of view we consider it, — whether upon its merits, as that element which has contributed most to lifting the race above a status of hopeless intellectual infe-
172 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
riority, or whether as a human document, in con- sidering the results of racial contact and association. It is a mistake to regard the mulatto as a being peculiar to America, or his existence as a reproach to any particular branch or section of the white family. Amidst all the confusion over "race prob- lems" throughout the world, the one patent, indis- putable fact is that nowhere on earth has the white man refused to mingle his blood illegitimately with an inferior race, where masses of the two have been brought into contact. This has been true of the Boers in South Africa ; of the English in Australia, New Zealand and other colonies having a native population ; of the Spanish and French in the West Indies and America, North and South; of Ameri- cans in their own country. In discussing the sub- ject of racial intermixture between whites and negroes we seem to lose sight of the extent and duration of their racial contact, and contract our vision to a few states on the North American con- tinent. As a matter of fact the blending process between the modern negro and the modern white man was begun on the African coast more than four hundred and fifty years ago, — when the Portuguese began to embark upon the trade which was destined to play so tremendous a role in the history of four continents and their people. There were mulattoes in Portgual and Spain half a century before Amer- ica was discovered, and they were among the classes the carrying of whom to the New World was at first forbidden by the Spanish authorities. In South Africa they became strong enough to create a sub-tribe many years ago, known as Griquas. In the Portuguese colonies in West Africa they have become so numerous as to constitute in some re- spects the most important element of the popula-
THE KEGRO IN THE SOUTH. 173
tion. They have figured largely in the revolution- ary affairs of Cuba and of some South and Central American states. They set up for themselves the government of Santo Domingo, independent of that of Haiti, and are the dominent element in Liberia. They represent the real intelligence of the negroes of Jamaica, and are classed as ''colored," as dis- tinguished from the "black" peasant population of the island. In 1850 they constituted 11.2 per cent, of the negro population of the United States; 13.2 per cent, in 1860 ; 12.00 per cent, in 1870 ; and 15.2 per cent, in 1890. No separate enumeration of the mulatto element was attempted in 1900, but it will probably be tried again in 1910.
Our principal conclusion as to the composition of the negro population of the Southern states, and of the country, is that it is made up of quite as many, and equally as diverse, elements as our white population. It is impracticable at this day to ascer- tain the extent to which these various elements enter into the whole, or the influence which any of them has exercised in developing the traits and character- istics of the conglomerate mass which we now desig- nate the "American negro." Even in the case of the mulatto element this can be only approximately done. But in studying this new type, this "Ameri- can negro," or "negro American," it is of primary importance that we recognize its complex character, and not be led astray by the appearance in it of individuals markedly different from and superior to the average class. These individuals are more likely to be evidence of the strength of heredity than of the general capacity of the mass. They are likely to be either the result of atavistic influences, bring- ing to light the superior character of some negro enslaving, rather than enslaved negro, ancestor, or
174 EACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
the result of an intermixture of white blood. These individuals may be leaders among the people to whom unscientific social usage has assigned them, instruments for good or evil, as their individual characters may determine. But they tell us no more of the potentialities of the American negro class than does the degraded and brutish specimen of the West African, whom we often meet in the South, tell us of its permanent limitations.
The Negro Under Slavery.
It is not of particular moment how the negro came to this country. The prime consideration is the fact of his presence. Slavery as an institution is treated elsewhere in this series, but a few words on it are necessary here. We have stated above that negro slavery existed in Portugal and in Spain half a cen- tury before the discovery of America. The trade in negroes had been carried on by Arabs, between the Mediterranean and the region South of the Sahara, for seven hundred years prior to its over-sea begin- ning by Portugal. The transfer of negro slavery from Europe to America began in 1501, with the sending out of Ovando as governor of the island of Hispaniola. It is suggestive that at first only slaves "born in the power of Christians" were allowed to be imported, — thus restricting the new class of population to European negroes. This restriction, however, was of short duration, as in 1518 we find the Jeronomite Fathers advising the importation of "heathen negroes, of the kind of which we have already experience. ' ' The first slave trade monopoly granted by Charles V. was for 4,000 negroes in eight years, and was determined on upon the advice of Las Casas. Negroes were first taken to the Spanish American mainland about
THE NEGKO IN THE SOUTH. 175
1523-25. They were not carried to the English North American colonies until 1619, nearly a cen- tury later. So-called "estimates" of total negro importations are really little more than guesses. The number brought into Spanish colonies is put variously at from 4,500,000 to 7,000,000. The Eng- lish early became the greatest slave carriers in the world, and after the assiento of 1713 they supplied not only their own, but the Spanish colonies as well. The number of negroes taken into the English con- tinental and insular possessions during the century preceding the American revolution has been placed at approximately 3,000,000. Bancroft estimates that 300,000 were imported into the thirteen Ameri- can colonies down to 1776.
From the fog of controversialism which has enshrouded the subject of negro slavery for so many years there emerge a few indisputable truths. The most important of these is that from first to last, from its introduction into the West Indies to its introduction and gradual spread in the North Amer- ican colonies and states, the institution was essen- tially and fundamentally an economic one. We need not bother ourselves over the mistake of the good Las Casas, in recommending negro slavery. His recommendation would not have brought or kept one thousand negroes in Hispaniola, if it had not been supported by the very practical opinion of others, after a brief experience, that one negro slave was equal to four Indians in the amount of work he could do in the mines. So it was when slavery secured its great foothold in Barbadoes, in the first half of the Seventeenth century. Negroes were taken there in large numbers, and the institution of slavery fostered upon the island, solely because Bar- badian planters had learned from those of Brazil
176 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
that sugar could be grown with great profit and success by the use of slave labor. It became a part of the recognized industrial system of all American colonies which produced a staple agricultural com- modity,— whether sugar, tobacco, indigo, rice or cot- ton. After it had become thus developed and estab- lished in the British West Indies, and not until then, it was transferred to the British American mainland, and became part of the established order there. Slaves were held in all the colonies, — but just as slavery as an economic institution was an invariable part of the industrial system of all staple producing colonies, so on the other hand 'did it fail to find a place in the industrial system of those colonies which did not produce staple crops. The presence of .a few slaves whose labor was scarcely more than an incident to their existence, was one thing; the existence and maintenance of a ''sys- tem" of slave labor was another, and a very differ- ent thing. In those colonies in which their labor was not a necessary feature of the industrial organi- zation, negroes were relatively few in number and negro slavery never assumed the characteristic fea- tures of an "institution." In those in which the whole industrial economy was based upon and dependent upon slave labor, a system for the organi- zation and direction of such labor was an inevitable and necessary incident, and there slavery became an * ' institution . ' ' Bearing in mind these elementary but fundamental principles and distinctions, it is not difficult for us at once to see that the institution of slavery never had any real existence in what is now the United States outside the Southern colonies, and also to understand why it did not develop else- where. The abolition of slavery in communities where the labor of slaves was so insignificant a
THE NEGBO IN THE SOUTH. 177
feature of their industrial life as in the Middle and Northern colonies, was as natural and easy a proc- ess as its growth was natural and easy in the colo- nies further South. The progress or retardation of slavery was much more than a mere question of poli- tics or morals, — howsoever much these factors may have entered into either movement from time to time.
But what of the influence of this institution and of the relations which developed under it! As the institution itself was mainly economic, it is natural that the economic aspect of it bulks largest in the perspective of forty-odd years. Just how great a factor in the industrial life of the colonial and ante- bellum South was the negro per se will always remain a mooted question. "What the development of the South would have been without the negro, — whether it would have taken a wholly different course, or moved as rapidly in the one it actually followed, — had the labor of the South been wholly white instead of mainly negro, — free instead of slave, — are questions which will never be answered. Historians and economists have almost hopelessly confused the subject of slavery with that of the race of the slave. It is scarcely possible now to say, if on the one hand negro slave labor made for the prog- ress of the South, how much was due to the negro and how much to slavery, — or, if on the other slav- ery, made against its progress, where lay the greater responsibility, upon the system or the race. But we are here concerned much more with the South- ern negro than with the Southern white man, and happily there is no question as to the economic effect of slavery upon the slave. It is the one aspect of the entire subject upon which there is not room for two opinions. Slavery transformed the savage
Vol. 10—12
178 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
negro into a civilized man; it taught him to work, and showed him what could be accomplished by the labor of his hands; and then it left him as a free man with almost a moribpoly of the field in which he had been employed as a slave. In 1865 no other body of negroes in the world occupied as advanta- geous a position economically as those in the South- ern states.
But in a broad view there was more in the pres- ence of a great mass of negroes in the South than the mere results of their labor. It is easy to say that the white race was necessarily affected by the contact of millions of another and an inferior race, but it is difficult to say just how the effects of such contact were manifested. Here again we touch one of the controversial aspects of the ante-bellum situ- ation. Between the extremists who held on one side that such contact was ennobling to the white man and beneficial to the negro, and on the other that it was degrading to both, it may be safe to assume that neither was altogether right nor altogether wrong. It was largely a matter of individuals. The ownership and control of negroes unquestionably was brutalizing to some, while to others it brought a sense of responsibility which developed and ennobled character. For the relatively few negroes whose employment in the relations of domestic serv- ice brought them into contact with the best class of white people, slavery created refining influences which no other section or group of negroes enjoyed elsewhere. These are the negroes who are pictured in the romances which deal with ante-bellum life. But they were the chosen few, — as compared with the great mass who lived and died untouched by such associations. Probably the most that may be said of the latter was that they were brought by
THE XEGEO IN THE SOUTH. 179
slavery to a knowledge of the English language and of the Christian religion, such as could otherwise have been accomplished for an equal number of their race in Africa only by missionary efforts so tre- mendous as to have approached the impossible. On the whole, considered in all its phases, we may accept the judgment of one of the sanest men who came out of slavery, — that out of it the negro, as a racial group, got more than did the white man.
The Free Negro Before 1865.
Before passing to a consideration of the negro since emancipation, let us glance at the connecting link between freedom and slavery, — the "free negro" of the ante-bellum South. This section of the race is almost invariably ignored in discussions of the American negro. They formed a group of which but little is known by the present generation, and concerning which there was very great diversity of contemporary opinion.
As far back as we may go in the study of negro slavery we find that free negroes were invariably an element in the population. They were in Spain as early as 1474, and probably some years before. They appear at an early date in Hispaniola, and seem to have accompanied every movement of slaves in the West Indies and on the mainland. They were provided for simultaneously with negro slaves in the legislation of the British American colonies. Notwithstanding laws which were almost invariably hostile, and despite constant legal efforts to restrict the emancipation of slaves, the free negro element steadily increased after the revolution and down to the outbreak of the war. The census of 1790 returned 700,000 slaves, in round numbers, and
180 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
60,000 negroes in the free class. By 1860 we had a slave population of 3,950,000, with 488,000 negroes who were free. The difference between the exist- ence of laws and their enforcement finds no better illustration than the case of the free negroes in the Southern states. Every sort of restrictive and dis- criminatory law against these people may be pointed to on Southern statute books; yet these were in the main dead letters, for which there need be no bet- ter evidence than the fact that of the above men- tioned number of free negroes in 1860, more than half, — 251,000, — lived in the Southern states.
The condition of these people varied from one of poverty to that of comparative wealth, — just about as economic conditions vary now. Their general status, taken as a whole, was better in Louisiana than anywhere else in the country, North or South. In 1836, in the city of New Orleans, 855 free people of color paid taxes on property assessed at $2,462,- 470, and owned 620 slaves. In 1860 the property holdings of the same class for the state at large were estimated at from $13,000,000 to $15,000,000. There were free colored planters in Louisiana whose prop- erty in land and slaves was valued at from $25,000 to $150,000. Many of these people enjoyed educa- tional advantages and lived amidst refined sur- roundings equal to any possessed by their white neighbors. They were invariably of the mulatto class, and thus far we have found no instance of a free negro acquiring either wealth or position. What was true of conditions in New Orleans and Louisiana was true also of Baltimore, Charleston, Mobile, and other less important "free negro" cen- tres in the South, and of Philadelphia, New York, and other places in the North. In the aggregate large numbers of free people made the best of their
THE NEGRO IX THE SOUTH. 181
opportunities and overcame heavy obstacles, — not- withstanding the general opprobrium in which they were held as a class. The granting of freedom to the negro masses meant the extinction of the lines which had been created by time and condition between free people of color and negro slaves. In the dead level of civil equality which followed, the smaller element was either crushed or swallowed up by the larger. Save here and there, the two have coalesced into a common mass.
The Negro Since Emancipation.
The few years of freedom since 1865 are a short span in the life of the Southern negro since his ancestors left Africa for Spain, the West Indies and North America. But it has been ample to prove the fallacy of predictions as to the future of the race, made while it was yet in slavery. By one party to the controversy it was declared that the negro would dwindle away in numbers, and be wholly unable to provide for himself, if given freedom. The other expected him to become at once the equal of the white man.
Progress is hard to measure when the point of beginning is undefined and intangible. But the race has not died out. It has increased from 4,000,000 in 1860 to nearly 9,000,000 in 1900. Not only has it been able to provide for itself against hunger, but it has also accumulated some hundreds of millions of property. But this means little or nothing for the masses, the great bulk of the race, — save an increase in numbers. This wealth is far more unequally divided than among the whites, — and, save what is probably a per capita pittance, is in the hands of the mulatto element. And measured by ordinary standards of physical well being the average negro
182 RACIAL ELEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
of the masses is no whit better provided for to-day than he was in 1860, — with many not nearly so well off. But he is free, and it is with him to advance or go backward.
From 1865 to about 1880 the negro passed through a period of turbulence which was just the reverse of what he most needed in his transition from slavery to freedom. It was a period which not only ham- pered the normal evolution of his free status, but which also sowed the seeds of a racial antagonism which was most inimical to his future welfare. The most remarkable feature about that period was that it did not wholly destroy every vestige of the kindly relations between the races which had existed before the war. By the close of this period the negro was no longer an important factor in Southern politics. Another decade witnessed his total elimination from a field which had meant for him nothing but strife and the catspaw's fate.
Since his withdrawal from politics the negro has been influenced in his life and movements by consid- erations mainly economic, — where tangible consid- erations have controlled him at all. He is still chiefly employed in agriculture and his home is in the cotton states. One-third of all the negroes in the United States live in the three states of Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama. Nearly seven-tenths of the total live in these and the states of Virginia, North and South Carolina, Louisiana and Texas, combined. Notwithstanding the northward move- ment of which so much is said from time to time, it remains after all of small significance in considering the location of this class of our population.
There is a steadily increasing group of educated, cultured and refined negroes, — corresponding in relative status to the better class of "free people of
THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTH. 183
color" in Louisiana before 1861. The two groups also possess the similar characteristic of being com- posed mainly of persons of mixed blood. This group has given the race its leaders and furnished its bet- ter professional men; has written its books, many of them of genuine merit; edits its magazines and the best of its papers. It is moulding negro thought in this country, and is working toward the creation of a negro public opinion. The destinies of the negro and of the mulatto in America seem insepa- rably identified. Whatever the future may hold for the two will likely be shaped by the mulatto ele- ment,— in so far as it is shaped by either. Both the opportunity and its responsibilities are theirs. See also RACIAL PROBLEMS, ADJUSTMENTS AND DIS- TURBANCES (Vol. IV.), and THE INTELLECTUAL AND LITERARY PROGRESS OF THE NEGRO (Vol. VII.).
BIBLIOGRAPHY.— DuBois, W. E. B.: The Souls of Black Folk; Hart, A. B. : Slavery and Abolition; Helps, Arthur: The Spanish Conquest in America; Hoffman, F. L. : Eace Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro; Murphy, E. G. : Problems of the Present South; Stone, A. H. : Studies in the American Eace Problem; Willcox, Walter F. : Negroes in the United States (Census Bulletin No. 8) : Washington, Booker T. : Up From Slavery. Publications of various censuses of Atlanta University, of the American Negro Acad- emy, of the various American learned societies, and articles under the title ' ' Negro ' ' in American and English encyclopedias. See also bibliographies prepared by the Library of Congress, also by W. E. B. DuBois and that prepared by R. H. Edwards.
ALFRED HOLT STONE,
Author of Studies in the American Eace Problem
PART III.
THE EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER I. EDUCATION IN THE SOUTHERN COLONIES.
Conditions and Development. HE five Southern colonies were Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Caro- lina and Georgia. The two Carolinas were not separated till 1700; and Georgia was not colonized till 1733. The latter, there- fore, occupies a subordinate place in the history of colonial education.
Education in all the colonies of the South followed substantially the same line of development. There was first a period of discussion and planning; then followed the establishment of schools of various kinds ; and lastly, after the achievement of American independence, there came an era of educational activity, during which many academies, colleges and universities were founded. This last stage of devel- opment lies beyond the scope of the present article. The substantial identity of educational work in all the Southern colonies was a natural result of similar conditions. There were the same elements of population, First came the English settlers ; later
184
EDUCATION IN THE COLONIES. 185
followed successive waves of Scotch, Huguenot and German immigrants. All alike were engaged in the arduous task of subduing a virgin continent, and establishing for themselves and their children a per- manent home. And, lastly, instead of collecting in towns, they were chiefly engaged in agriculture, and therefore constituted a rural population.
In this particular the Southern colonists were unlike their contemporaries of New England. The latter dwelt together in communities or towns. Accordingly they were in a better position to estab- lish and maintain schools than were the colonists of the South. As we shall see, the educational impulse was not lacking in the Southern colonies; but the scattered condition of the population made the estab- lishment of public schools, throughout a large part of the territory, an impossible undertaking.
The first census, taken in 1790, throws much light on this phase of the subject. The population of the settled area of the United States was sixteen to the square mile. During the colonial period the popula- tion in the South was far below that average; and for a large part of the South this fact made public schools utterly impracticable.
There was no new or independent educational development in the Southern colonies. The English settler brought with him the traditions and customs of the mother country. Education was regarded as a private or individual interest. The English planter hired a tutor for his children ; and after thus giving them an elementary training, he thought of an academy or college, after the type of Westminster or Eton, for their further education. In many cases the wealthy colonist sent his children abroad to complete their education.
The Scotch-Irish or Presbyterian colonists, who spread over Virginia and the Carolinas toward the
186 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
middle of the Eighteenth century, brought with them the educational interest and activity of their mother country. Before the founding of Jamestown, Scot- land had made provision by law for the maintenance of a school in every parish ; and by an appropriation from the public treasury it was placed in the power of the poorest parent to give his children an educa- tion. Thus it happened, as Macaulay says, ' ' to what- ever land the Scotchman might wander, in America or India, he was raised above his competitors." Many of the best schools of colonial times were established and maintained by Scotch Presbyterian ministers or teachers.
Early Interest in Education.
It is surprising to know how early in colonial his- tory education began to receive attention. Neither the colonists themselves nor the English companies that sent them out were indifferent to learning. Thus the Virginia Company in 1618, eleven years after the founding of Jamestown, took steps to found the College of Henrico, and for this purpose set apart £1,500 and 15,000 acres of land. In 1621 the Eev. Patrick Copeland raised a fund for opening a school at Charles City. It was designed to be pre- paratory to the college of Henrico. But the follow- ing year these promising plans were cut short by the Indian massacre that almost annihilated the Virginia colony.
When we turn to the other Southern colonies we find similar plans at a very early date. The colony of Maryland was founded in 1634; and in 1671 a plan for a college was proposed, but unfortunately was not carried out on account of the mutual jeal- ousy or suspicion of the Protestant and Roman Cath- olic members of the assembly. In 1701, a year after it became a separate colony, South Carolina pro-
EDUCATION IN THE COLONIES, 187
vided by legislative enactment that every parish might draw £10 from the public treasury to assist in the erection of a school house. The first free school was established a little later in 1710.
Principal Factors.
The religious motive was a principal factor in the educational movement in the Southern colonies, as it was in Massachusetts. The missionary spirit is very apparent in the educational work of the Sev- enteenth and Eighteenth centuries. The religious needs of the Indians were constantly in mind. The college of Henrico, as expressly declared in the action of the Virginia Company, in 1618, was designed "for a training up of the children of those infidels in true religion, moral virtue, and civility, and for other godliness."* In the charter of William and Mary College we learn that it was founded "to the end that the Church of Virginia may be fur- nished with a seminary of ministers of the Gospel, and that the youth may be piously educated in good letters and manners, and that the Christian faith may be propagated among the western Indians to the glory of Almighty God."f The Society for Prop- agating the Gospel in Foreign Parts established the first schools in South Carolina early in the Eighteenth century.
But the practical needs of the colonies were also a strong factor. To the thinkers of the Seventeenth century education had two principal ends : first, to qualify men for service in the Church ; and, second, to fit them for positions in the civil government. Thus, in an act of the Assembly of Maryland in 1723, we read that "the preceding assemblies for some years past have had much at heart the absolute
* Neill, English Colonization of America, p. 111. t History of the College of William and Mary, p. 3.
188 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
necessity * * to make the best provision in their power for the liberal and pious education of the youth of this province * * so as to be fitted for the discharge of their duties in the several stations and employments they may be called to, and employed in, either in church or state."* The same general attitude toward education prevailed in the other colonies.
Philanthropic Spirit.
In the early history of education in the Southern colonies, no less than in the Northern colonies, we discover a remarkable benevolent spirit. The spirit manifested itself in generous gifts and bequests for the establishment and maintenance of schools. In 1634 Benjamin Symes, of Elizabeth City county, Virginia, "devised two hundred acres of land on Poquoson River, with the milk and increase of eight cows, for the maintenance of a learned, honest man to keep, upon the said ground, a free school." A few years later, in 1659, Thomas Eaton gave "five hundred acres on Back River, with other properties, for the support of a free school and an able school- master to educate and teach the children born within the county of Elizabeth City." The school estab- lished by Symes has the distinction of being the first free school in America. It was later united with the school established by Eaton; and as the Symes-Eaton Academy it still maintains a flourish- ing existence at Hampton. In 1675 Henry Peasley founded a school in Newport county, Virginia, endowing it "with six hundred acres of land, ten cows, and a breeding mare."
The philanthropic spirit was scarcely less active in the other Southern colonies. In 1684 Augustine Herman, of Maryland, provided in his will that, in
* Steiner, History of Education in Maryland, p. 22.
EDUCATION IN THE COLONIES. 189
case of the extinction of his lineal heirs, his three estates should go to the lord proprietary and the General Assembly "for the use, propagation and propriety of a free denature school and college" of the Protestant faith. In 1722 Richard Beresford, of South Carolina, left the sum of £6,500 currency to the vestry of the Episcopal church of his parish, to be held in trust "for the maintenance and edu- cation of the poor children of the parish." This endowment is still in effective operation. In 1733 James Childs, of South Carolina, gave £600 for a school at Chilsbury, whose citizens, moved by this benevolent example, made an additional subscrip- tion of £2,200. These are only a few of the gifts and bequests made in the early colonial period.
Another practical manifestation of the Christian and philanthropic spirit is found in the establish- ment of charity schools, which were designed for the instruction of orphans and other poor children. The most notable of these enterprises was the Orphan House at Bethesda, near Savannah, Ga. It was established by the noted preacher and evangelist, the Eev. George Whitefield, in 1740. It was sup- ported by contributions raised by the eloquent foun- der on missionary tours in the colonies and in Eng- land. It survived for more than sixty years, and became a valuable agency in the intellectual and moral advancement of Georgia. Two of its inmates afterwards became governors of the state.
In 1750 a charity school was established in Talbot county, Maryland. The leader of the enterprise waa the Rev. Thomas Bacon, rector of St. Peter's parish. "The intent of it," as he explained, "is to rescue a number of poor children from ignorance, idleness, vice, immorality and infidelity, and enable them to be more useful to themselves and the com- munity they belong to." The school exacted manual
190 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
labor. It was open also to negroes, of whom the founder of the school declared in a sermon, "They have souls to be saved as well as others."*
Libraries and Colleges.
The early colonists of the South understood the educational value of public libraries. Hence we meet with several individual and united efforts to provide collections of books. In 1692 Dr. Bray was sent by the Bishop of London to visit the Episcopal churches in the colonies ; and not long afterward he presented the town of Bath, in North Carolina, with a public library. About 1725 more than sixty vol- umes were presented by Edward Moseley to the pub- lic library of Edenton, N. C. The list of books shows that they consisted chiefly of ponderous works on theology. The Society for Propagating the Gos- pel in Foreign Parts was especially active in establishing libraries.
The most notable library work done in the South- ern colonies was due to the efforts of the Library Society of Charleston, S. C., which was organized in 1748. The Society announced its purpose in the following words: "As the gross ignorance of the naked Indian must raise our pity, and his savage disposition our horror and detestation, it ic our duty as men, our interest as members of a community, to take every step, to pursue every method in our power, to prevent our descendants from sinking into a similar situation ; to obviate this possible evil, and to obtain the desirable end of handing down the European arts and manners to the latest times, is the great aim of the members of this society. ' 'f The library founded by this society now numbers more
• Steiner, History of Education in Maryland, p. 34.
t Carroll, Historical Collections of South Carolina, Vol. 11, p. 489.
EDUCATION IX THE COLONIES. 191
than 20,000 volumes, and has an annual income of more than $2,000.
Among the noteworthy schools that were actually established in the Southern colonies, the first place must be assigned to the College of William and Mary, which was chartered by King William and Queen Mary in 1693. The initiatory steps looking to the foundation of a college in Virginia was taken by the General Assembly as early as 1660, when that body passed a bill "that for the advance of learning, education of youth, supply of the ministry and pro- motion of piety, there be land taken upon purchases for a college and free school."*
Before the Rev. James Blair went abroad to pro- cure the charter of the college a considerable inter- est was taken in the enterprise at home. The lieuten- ant-governor headed a subscription list with a gener- ous gift, and his example was followed by many other prominent members of the colony. Even Sir William Berkeley, who thanked God that there were no free schools or printing in the colony, promoted the subscription to the college.
When the Rev. James Blair went to England to intercede for a charter some £2,500 had already been subscribed in Virginia for the founding of the col- lege. For the further support of the institution, their majesties turned over to the college the quit- rents yet due in the colony, amounting to nearly £2,000, and set apart 2,000 acres of land for its bene- fit. For its support they also laid a tax of a penny a pound on all tobacco exported from Virginia and Maryland to the other American colonies.
The College of William and Mary was located at Williamsburg, and the Rev. James Blair was fittingly named in the charter as its first president. For many years it nobly fulfilled its purpose. It
* History of Mie College of William and Mary, p. 34.
192 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
not only supplied the Episcopal Church with its most worthy ministers for a long time, but also fur- nished the colony and afterwards the nation with some of their ablest leaders and statesmen.
While Lord Baltimore appointed the governors of Maryland, little or nothing was done for the estab- lishment of schools. But a change came with Gov- ernor Nicholson. With the view of supplying the Church of England with a succession of ministers, he had a law passed in 1696 for establishing a school in every county. At this time a school was begun at Annapolis, to which the Governor and the House of Burgesses contributed liberally. It was called King William's school, and was designed to teach "arith- metic, navigation, and all useful learning." It was intended also to prepare divinity students for the College of William and Mary.
Establishment of Other Schools.
In North Carolina the establishment of schools by the colonial government was somewhat belated. In 1736 Governor Johnston, in his address to the legis- lature, lamented the fact that no provision had been made "to inspire the. youth with generous senti- ments, worthy principles,- or the least tincture of literature." In 1775, at the end of the Eoyal Gov- ernment, there were but two noteworthy schools in the whole province, one at Newbern and the other at Edenton. In 1770 a charter was obtained from the Provincial Assembly for the establishment of the Queen's Museum at Charlotte; and this institu- tion, though its charter was repealed by the king, continued to flourish. Later it was known as Liberty Hall (1777).
About 1767 a private school that afterwards acquired a wide reputation was opened by David Caldwell in Guilford county, North Carolina. He
EDUCATION IN THE COLONIES. 193
was educated at Princeton, and entered the ministry of the Presbyterian Church. l ' His log cabin, ' ' it has been said, "served for many years to North Caro- lina as an academy, a college and a theological seminary." This school educated many young men whG afterwards became distinguished in the various callings of life.
The constitution of North Carolina adopted in 1776 declared that a school or schools shall be established, and that "all useful learning shall be duly encouraged and promoted in one or more uni- versities." Accordingly in 1789 the University of North Carolina was incorporated, and three years later the institution was located at Chapel Hill, where it has since remained as a flourishing university.
Mention has already been made of the early estab- lishment of schools in South Carolina through the active interest and liberality of Richard Beresford and James Child. To these may be added the school at Dorchester, which was established by an act of the legislature in 1734. It was provided "that the master of said school shall teach the
learned languages, Latin and Greek tongues, and * catechise and instruct the youth in the prin- ciples of the Christian religion." It is expressly stated that the motive of this act was the de.sire manifested by the parents of Dorchester to have their children "instructed in grammar and othe? liberal arts and sciences."
During the colonial period no college was estab- lished in South Carolina. But through its publio and private schools "the means of education were placed within the reach of all." The interest in education continued during the troubled period of the Revolution; and at the close of hostilities "there
* Meviwether, History of Hipher Education in South Carolina, p. 23. *1. 10—13
194 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
were eleven public and three charitable grammar schools, and eight private schools, of which we know ; that is, twenty-two schools in the twenty-four parishes and districts into which the state was divided."*
Rural Schools and Education of Girls.
Not much can be said in praise of the rural neigh- borhood schools. The school houses were often rude log structures with clapboard roofs and split-log benches. The schoolmasters were, in many cases, not men of large literary attainments. But in schools of every class the discipline was severe. Both patrons and teachers believed heartily in the precept of Solomon touching the use of the rod; and, as a result, whipping was the ordinary form of punish- ment for offenses of all kinds. In this merciless use of the rod there was little regard for age or sex ; young men and children, boys and girls, were all alike severely punished.
The education of girls was simple. In no part of our country, indeed, had it reached the advanced character of to-day. The daughter of the wealthy landowner received her instruction at home under a governess or in the select school kept by the minister of the parish. Besides reading, writing, and ele- mentary mathematics, her education embraced a lit- tie French, embroidery and painting. There was instruction in music sufficient to render the simple melodies then in vogue. But if the young women of colonial days were deficient in the knowledge of books and arts, they understood domestic science, and acquired the social graces of a charming manner and sparkling conversation. The social functions of Virginia and the other Southern colonies were often brilliant affairs.
*-McCrady, Education in South Carolina, p. 34.
EDUCATION IN THE COLONIES. 195
The primary course of instruction embraced the usual elementary branches, such as reading, writing, arithmetic and grammar. But in the academies or schools of secondary instruction Latin and Greek and the higher mathematics received especial atten- tion. Owing to the large number of young men edu- cated abroad, the humanistic training of the great public schools and universities of England was held in high esteem. Accordingly we find that Dr. Sam- uel Miller, of Princeton, expressed the belief in 1808 that "the learned languages, especially the Greek, were less studied in the Eastern than in the South- ern and Middle States, and that while more individ- uals attended to classical learning there than here, it was attended to more superficially."* And Hugh S. Legare says that before and just after the Revo- lution "there can be no doubt their attainments in polite literature were very far superior to those of their contemporaries at the North, and the standard of scholarship in Charleston was consequently much higher than in any other city on the continent."
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Adams: Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia (Bureau of Education); Bancroft: History of the United States; Campbell: History of Virginia; Carroll: Historical Collec- tions of South Carolina; Howison: History of Virginia; Jones: Education in Georgia (Bureau of Education); MeCrady: Education in South Carolina (Bureau of Education) ; McMaster: History of the People of the United States; Meriwether: History of Higher Education in South Carolina (Bureau of Education); Neill: Eng- lish Colonization in America; Smith: History of Education in North Carolina (Bureau of Education); Steiner: History of Education in Maryland (Bureau of Education) ; History of the College of William and Mary.
FRANKLIN VEBZELIUS NEWTON PAINTER,
Professor of Pedagogy, BoanoTce College, Salem, Va.
» Quoted in Meriwether, History of Higher Education in South Caro- lina, p. 27.
196 EDUCATIONAL LIF1 OF THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER II.
EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH BEFORE THE WAR.
Conditions and Limitations of Southern Educational Efforts.
?N the discussion of educational interests and educational work in the various parts of the Union, from the colonial period to 1861 and later, a proper account has not usually been taken of the conditions and limitations which con- trolled educational effort in the various sections. The states at large are, by the facts, divided into three groups, characterized respectively by special conditions and special modes of development.
In the New England states, from colonial times, the population has been generally more densely aggregated than elsewhere. The town or township early became the unit in civil government, and readily afforded pupils and material support for local schools. Homogeneous population and small farms made local taxation for such schools a logical and economic procedure, so that in any township where a school was really desired it could be main- tained at the public expense. The only hindrance to such educational development under these con- ditions would be a lack of proper interest or of proper supervision.
In the newer states northwest of the Ohio and west of the Mississippi at the time of settlement Con- gress set apart one section of land in every town- ship for the maintenance of elementary schools and a grant of two townships in each for a seminary of learning — more than one-thirty-sixth part of all the lands in each state. Texas made practically the same
EDUCATION BEFORE THE WAR. 197
arrangement with her lands. Material foundation for elementary schools was thus laid in each state before the population came, and as these north- western states were filled rapidly with a vigorous and homogeneous and prosperous population, public schools of every grade, from the primary to the university, were a natural and comparatively easy development.
In the states from Maryland southward, condi- tions were different. That there was no lack of interest in education in the earliest times is shown by the fact that efforts were made, from the very first settlement, for founding schools and colleges in the Southern colonies and states bordering on the Atlantic. It was necessary for success that these efforts should be adapted to local conditions a-nd environment. "If the Massachusetts law of 1647, that every township of fifty householders should appoint one 'to teach all such children as should resort to him to write and read,' had been enforced in Maryland, it would not have resulted in the estab- lishing of a single school, since no portion of the province was thickly enough settled to have fifty householders in an area equal to a New England township. Annapolis, about 1700, contained about forty dwelling houses, and St. Mary's was never more than a village. Other towns were such only in name, and their claim to the name lay in the fact that they were ports of entry. Governor Berkeley's reply to the question of the commissioners of foreign plantations as to what course was taken in Virginia for instructing the people in the Christian religion : 'The same that is taken in England out of towns, every man according to his ability instructing his children,' will answer as well for Maryland."*
:' History of Education in Maryland, United States Bureau of Educa- tion Circular of Information No. II, 1904.
198 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
In the Southern colonies the land holdings were generally large. The distribution of population made the New England plan for township support of schools impracticable. The idea that every man according to his ability should provide for the edu- cation of his own children was deeply rooted. The employment of private tutors for the training of the children in one or more families, the agency of the church and parish in organizing schools and in look- ing after the interest of poor children, the organiza- tion of local societies for promoting education of poor children as well as others, and the endowment of schools for the training of poor children, mark the direction in which educational effort in the Southern colonies was thus forced by unavoidable circumstances. In colonial days and immediately after the American Revolution, public interest brought about the foundation of many academies, where young men were trained in classical learning, and a number of institutions classed as colleges.
Institutions in Virginia.
In Virginia as early as 1609, was planned and organized the first institution in America aspiring to be a college or university. This was Henrico College on the James Eiver, endowed with 10,000 acres of land, to which Hargrave, an Episcopal clergyman, gave his library, as much as John Har- vard later gave to Harvard University. The mas- sacre of 1622 put an end to this enterprise, and to the East India School organized as preparatory to the college. William and Mary College in Virginia, which ranks next in age after Harvard University, still exists. In the state of Virginia, Hampden- Sidney College (1777), Washington and Lee Uni- versity (1782), the University of Virginia (1825), Randolph-Macon College (1829), Richmond College
EDUCATION BEFOKE THE WAR. 199
(1832), Emory and Henry College (1835), Virginia Military Institute (1839), Roanoke College (1843), are institutions which, each in its proper sphere, have afforded opportunities which were not sur- passed, in the days before the War of Secession, in any state in the Union. The University of Virginia, from its foundation, has ranked among the foremost institutions in America in scholarship and influence. These higher institutions were supplemented by dozens of private seminaries and academies which gave the necessary preparation to boys intending to enter college, and advanced training to girls and young women.
Maryland.
In Maryland conditions were similar. Saint Johns College and Washington College were combined into one state institution in 1785, as the first University of Maryland. Other institutions, including a college of medicine, of law, of divinity, and of arts and sciences, were organized after 1805 into the second University of Maryland. Besides these, at least ten denominational schools and colleges, which were organized from 1784 to 1843, afforded large means for higher education. These institutions were sup- plemented by a number of private academies and lower schools maintained by churches, parishes and educational societies, chiefly for poor children.
North Carolina.
In North Carolina, the first settlers, largely Scotch-Irish, along with their churches built schools and academies. These academies were found in almost every community, and afforded excellent opportunities for classical training. In the first constitution for the state, adopted in 1776, provision was made for the founding of a state university, and
200 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
this institution was incorporated in 1789, and the cornerstone was laid in 1793. It has continued to do a large work and to maintain high standards. A published list of those who studied in the university before 1835, and who afterwards became distin- guished shows more than a hundred names in the highest positions in church and state — senators, congressmen, judges, bishops and college profes- sors— in many states. Davidson College (1835). Wake Forest College (1838), Trinity College (1838)', besides a number of other colleges for young men and young women, under private or denominational control, afforded facilities for higher training, and their pupils were prepared in elementary schools and academies which were numerous throughout the state. North Carolina, as did the other Southern states, accumulated a fund known as the Literary Fund, derived from various sources, and for use in the training of poor children.
In 1838 North Carolina established a system of public education under which it was proposed to have the state divided into 1,250 school districts, to have a normal department for the training of teach- ers as at the university, and to use the income of the Literary Fund and local taxation for the mainte- nance of these schools. "The scheme provided only for common schools, and left academies to succeed these at no long interval, and colleges and universi- ties in due time to crown the whole." Before this system was put in operation "in 1840 there were two colleges (including the university), 141 acad- emies and grammar schools, 632 primary and com- mon (county) schools, making a total of 775 edu- cational institutions. The number of students in attendance was as follows: At colleges, 158; at academies, 4,398 ; at other schools, 14,937 ; making a
EDUCATION BEFOEE THE WAK. 201
total of 19,483." From the amounts expended and the length of the term of the public schools in 1840, North Carolina compared favorably with many of the New England and northwestern states, and the public school system continued to increase in effi- ciency up to the outbreak of the war. Conditions in North Carolina as to population and public senti- ment were more favorable to the development of a public school system than in other Southern states.
South Carolina.
In South Carolina, from the earliest colonial times, there was no lack of wholesome and vigorous interest in education. The first white settlers were generally well-to-do planters. In the colonial days these men not infrequently sent their sons to the English universities for training. They kept in closer touch with the mother country than the resi- dents of other colonies, and many of the men who became prominent in the affairs of the colony, and of the state in its earlier days, were educated in England, A published statement of the names of Americans who were admitted to the London bar in the Eighteenth century, to 1785, shows a total of 114, and that forty-four of these were from South Carolina. The influence of these men and their families upon education in the colony was strongly felt. The act for the organization of South Caro- lina College was passed in 1801. Probably no insti- tution in America has exerted a finer influence. In 1862 its requirements for admission were fully as high as those in Harvard and Yale, and apparently in excess of those required in Columbia University at that time. Thomas Jefferson chose it for his grandsons to attend in preference to any other eol-
* Smith. C. L. : History of Education in North Carolina (United States Bureau of Education).
202 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
lege in America. While the number of students was never very large, the total number of graduates from 1806 to 1861 being 1,740, there is probably no college in America which has trained a larger proportion of men who became distinguished in the affairs of the state and the nation. Among these were twenty-two governors of states, fourteen United States senators, eight lieutenant-governors, thirty-nine United States and Confederate States representatives, thirty-three judges and chancellors, fifteen presidents of colleges, thirty-nine professors in colleges, besides many others who became distinguished in church and state. The results of the training given in other state universities in the Southern states, from Mary- land to Mississippi, in the years preceding 1861, were similar, if not so striking as in this older institution, and these results emphatically refute the statement that in this earlier period persons desir- ing higher education necessarily sought it outside these states. 'Academies and schools endowed by individuals or by charitable societies or by religious denominations were common throughout the state of South Carolina from the days of the Eevolution. Higher institutions came into existence early. Be- sides the College of South Carolina were the Col- lege of Charleston (1785), Erskine College (1825), Furman University (1825), Wofford College (1851), and numerous academies and schools. No classical academy in the country has a more honored history than Willington Academy under the famous teacher, Moses Waddel, from 1804 to 1819. The beginnings of a public school system were made in 1811, although free schools were established in Charleston in 1710.
Georgia.
In Georgia, as early as 1764, the Eev. George
EDUCATION BE^OEE THE WAR. 203
Whitefield urged the establishment of Bethesda Col- lege. Failing in this he urged the establishment of Bethesda Academy, which after a few years was destroyed by a hurricane and fire. Academies in Eichmond county, at Sunbury, and other places, were established before 1810, and under the manage- ment of churches and benevolent societies, afforded excellent opportunity for classical training. Pre- vious to 1821 funds had been accumulated for the support of free schools throughout the state, and in 1821 the General Assembly provided for the division of $500,000 equally between the academies and free schools. These funds were used for the maintenance of "poor scholars" in these schools. The University of Georgia was organized by an act of the Assembly passed Jan. 27, 1785, 40,000 acres of wild land in the northern part of the state being appropriated for its support. Franklin College, a department of the university, at Athens, was opened in 1801. It has from that time exerted a splendid influence upon education in the state. Denominational colleges and private institutions for young men and for young women were numerous. Mercer University (1831), Oglethorpe University (1835), Emory College (1836), with about fifteen colleges and institutes for young women, afforded excellent opportunity for classical training.
The influence of leading citizens in the five states above mentioned, during the colonial period and later, served to set a high estimate upon education, and as an incentive to every parent to seek its advantages for his children. In all the agencies thus existing opportunity was afforded for poor boys to secure advancement, and probably no poor boy desir- ing an education necessarily failed for lack of opportunity.
204 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
Tennessee.
In Tennessee, formed out of lands ceded to Con- gress by North Carolina, the spirit which existed in North Carolina largely controlled educational effort. The University of Nashville (1806 and 1826), and East Tennessee College, now the Uni- versity of Tennessee (1806), received large grants of lands from Congress and have continued to exert a wide and wholesome influence on education from their inception. The Southwestern Baptist Uni- versity (1846), Cumberland University (1842), Greenevillc College (1794), Maryville College (1819), represent denominational effort for higher education before the war. Tennessee received from Congress a part of the public domain within her borders foi education. These lands could not be located in each township before settlement, and thus the basic sup- port for common schools in each township was not available. Such schools were not founded in each township, and elementary training was left to pri- vate and church and local enterprises. Under these influences many schools of elementary and academic grade were founded and prospered.
Kentucky.
Kentucky was not so fortunate in the matter of land grants for schools and colleges, but the early interest of her people in Transylvania University (the first college west of the Alleghanies), in Center College, and in many private and denominational schools, early drew many people from the pioneer settlements of the southwest. Educational sentiment largely followed that in the parent state, Virginia.
Before the separate organization of Kentucky, Virginia gave 8,000 acres of land for an academy, and 20,000 acres for Transylvania University. The
EDUCATION BEFOKE THE WAR. 205
legislature of Kentucky early gave 6,000 acres or more of land to each of about forty county acad- emies. As the basis and beginning of an educational system these did not realize expectations. A general public school system provided for under the law of 1838 did not affect all the counties before 1853.
As elsewhere in the South, denominational and private enterprises developed many good academies, and the two colleges above named exerted a wide and wholesome influence, extending far beyond the limits of the state.
Other States.
In Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Arkansas and Louisiana, the development of education was under special conditions. These states were settled in the first half of the Nineteenth century, chiefly by immi- grants from the Southern states lying east of them. These immigrants were generally owners of prop- erty, bringing with them slaves and taking up large tracts of land for the cultivation of cotton. They came in communities, often bringing their minister and establishing churches and schools where they located. Deep interest in education of all grades was manifested from the first. These states were formed out of the public domain, and to each of them Congress gave one thirty-sixth part of the public domain for school purposes. In 1802, when Alabama and Mississippi constituted the Mississippi Territory, Jefferson College, near Natchez, was founded. It still exists. The state universities were established in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, and many private academies and denominational schools and colleges were developed. The large holdings of land by individuals caused a sparse dis- tribution of the white population in rural com- munities and was a serious obstacle to the develop-
206 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
ment of elementary public schools. But most of the white settlers were people of means, or speedily acquired means in the new states, and under the incentive of the spirit which pervaded all the South- ern states, and which made it a disgrace for any father not to give his children the means of educa- tion, private schools flourished and in these, through the use of the Literary Funds in the states, oppor- tunity was afforded for elementary instruction of poor children. In all this it should be remembered that nearly half the population of the Southern states consisted of negro slaves, for whom religious opportunities, but not schools, were afforded. While educational opportunity was available for most of the white children it was not generally offered through any completely organized system in these states. Therefore a mere statistical comparison of the recorded number of schools, of the public funds for education, and of the pupils enrolled in the South, with corresponding figures in the eastern and northwestern states, must be unfair to the Southern states.
Educational and Intellectual Development a Factor in Development
of Nation.
It cannot be denied that during the first half cen- tury of the Republic Southern intellect and South- ern statesmanship were dominant in public affairs. The men who wielded this influence were trained in the schools and in the social life of the South. That there was opportunity for intellectual devel- opment is shown by the educational facilities above stated. But not alone in schools are men trained for leadership. Every well ordered plantation home was a school for practical training.
Agriculture, the raising of cotton, grain, tobacco and rice, by the use of negro slave-labor, was the
EDUCATION BEFORE THE WAR. 207
common profession of the more vigorous white men. This calling demanded certain material opportuni- ties, and certain masterful traits of character that were cultivated and transmitted from father to son.
When the lands in Maryland, Virginia, the Caro- linas and Georgia became exhausted, as soon they did under severe and uneconomical methods, the more vigorous planters, with their negro laborers, sought fresh and fertile lands newly vacated by the Indians in the states south and west. Negro labor then as now was concentrated on the best agricul- tural lands in these states. The poorer whites were largely left in the worn out sections of the Atlantic slope, or were stranded in the coves of the Appa- lachian Mountains, or settled on the more undesir- able and cheaper lands in the regions further south.
This distribution and segregation of population, due mainly to economic causes, left certain classes of whites at a disadvantage as to schools and educa- tional opportunity in the Southern states as in other states. In towns, in rural communities which were prosperous, children of the poor, under the provi- sions existing, shared in the school privileges which were maintained by those who had means.
Out of the diverse and varied opportunities and means for the training of the youth of the Southern states before the war were developed a people who were foremost in the American Revolution, who were pioneers in seizing the opportunities for the enlargement of the nation in the west and south- west, who subdued the wilderness from the Atlantic to the Ohio and Mississippi and beyond, who were leaders in the councils of the nation, and who, in the defense of their rights under the constitution, showed in the conflict of 1861-65 a heroism, endur- ance and military skill that remains the wonder of the ages, and is an exhibition of the character and
208 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
achievement of a people only rivalled by the forti- tude and heroic endeavor with which the survivors and their descendants undertook to repair the rav- ages and consequences of that conflict. These results were potential in, and were made possible by, the education and the intellectual and religious life of the Southern people before the war.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Adams, Herbert B. (ed.): Contributions to Amer- ican Educational History, published by the United States Bureau of Education in the form of monographs, No. I on the "College of William and Mary," No. II, "Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia," and others of the series on the history of education in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and the other Southern states. Reference to authorities in these cover all sources of in- formation.
EGBERT BURWELL FULTON,
Superintendent The Miller School, Virginia; formerly Chancellor University of Mississippi and President Southern Educational Association.
CHAPTER III.
EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINCE THE
WAE.
T is impossible to understand economic and social movements in the South since the War between the States, and especially the spirit informing educational progress, unless we recall the dominant forces in the Nineteenth century and the South 's relation to them. A brief his- torical retrospect becomes therefore necessary in orcjer to appreciate the serious task which the school in the South is set to do.
In the Atlantic Ocean yonder there is only one Gulf current, but in the Nineteenth century there vere three such currents. These streams of tend-
EDUCATION BEFORE THE WAR. 209
ency are as traceable, as measurable, and as potent in their influence as that resistless river in the sea. What, now, were these three tendencies in the Nineteenth century?
I. The Liberal Tendency.
The liberal tendency of that age was both the strongest and the most easily discernible. The French Revolution, which ushered in our age, was a frenzy for freedom. Before the onrush of its eman- cipating spirit there went down in irretrievable ruin the absolutist governments which had so long held in bondage the continent of Europe. Stein's mem- orable edict of Oct. 9, 1807, abolishing serfdom in Prussia, is not so much an achievement of individual genius as the concrete expression of the difference between the old and new 'social order. Other coun- tries followed perforce, Mexico liberating her slaves in 1827, England in 1833, and even Eussia freeing her serfs in 1861. The odious distinctions of feudal- ism, with the obsolete privileges of the aristocrat, were one after another swept away ; equality for all before the law was established ; liberal constitutions were wrested from autocratic rulers ; the press was unmuzzled ; labor was unshackled ; in a word, democ- racy replaced despotism. It is pleasing to recall that it was our fathers of 1776 who intoned the dominant note of that creative century. Jefferson's Declaration of Independence was the prelude to the French Revolution with all of its liberalizing
influences.
II. The National Tendency.
The national tendency in that period was hardly less insistent than the liberal. The two forces, the liberal and the national, though separable, were usu- ally found working in unison. Nationality is to a people what personality is to a man. The desire of each race to set up housekeeping for itself, to live
Fol. 10—14
210 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
under its own vine and fig tree, to feel the full force of the spirit of kinship in its unifying effect, to attain to conscious racial solidarity — this intense and spontaneous yearning for nationality was to transform the map of Europe within a brief time. We can note only the results. Heroic Greece led off in 1829 ; Belgium succeeded the following year, Hol- land being individualized at the same time ; Italy and Germany achieved their nationality in 1870; eight years thereafter Roumania, Servia and Montenegro reached the same goal, while only yesterday Norway and Bulgaria were nationalized. Even the failures of Poland, Ireland, Hungary and Bohemia, despite heroic struggles to form nations, go to show the drift of events. The stars in their courses fight for progress. Nationality has shown itself an electric
spirit.
III. The Industrial Tendency.
The industrial tendency of that era was also marked. Invention kept pace with liberty and nation- ality. On Jan. 5, 1769, James Watt announced his patent "for a method of lessening the consumption of steam and fuel in fire engines"; and this fact may be regarded as the natal day of the Industrial Eevolution. England leaped to the fore in manufac- turing enterprise, starting the transition in all pro- gressive countries from the exclusively agricultural to the industrial status. That same year, 1769, Ark- wright's "frame" superseded the spinning- jenny. In 1787 a Kentish clergyman devised the power- loom. Six years later Eli Whitney invented the cot- ton-gin. What changes followed may be faintly sug- gested by recalling the fact that in 1784 an American ship landed eight bales of cotton at Liverpool, and the custom-house officers seized them, on the score that cotton was not a product of the United States. Coal, steam, steel, cotton, electricity — these made a
EDUCATION SINCE THE WAE. 211
new earth, giving magic wealth and power to nations in the van, such as England, Germany and France Society became dominantly industrial.
The Isolation of the South.
Circumstances — cruel circumstances which bring tears at the thought — had shut the South out of a share in these three mighty influences of that cen- tury. Destiny seemed to have arrayed her against them, in spite of the fact that during the American Revolution the South 's own sons were pioneers in the advocacy of national and liberal measures Such is the pathos and irony of our civil tragedy. Madi- son, writing the word National nineteen times in his first draft of the constitution; Washington, putting the stamp of his personality upon the Federal execu- tive ; Marshall, giving effect to the Federal judiciary, and Jefferson, drafting the ordinance of 1784, excluding slavery from the western territory — these men and measures appeared prophetic of a role for the South the reverse of what ensued. The shift in the scenes was made by Whitney's cotton-gin, rendering slavery profitable in the planting of cotton.
As a result, the South found itself at variance with the rapid changes which were sweeping over the world about the middle of the Nineteenth century. By this train of circumstances the South was led (1) To hold on to slavery in opposition to the liberal tendency of the age; (2) To resort to secession in opposition to "nationality ; (3) To be content with agriculture alone, instead of embracing the rising industrialism.
It was an instance of arrested development. The facts do not permit us to escape this conclusion, not- withstanding the nobility, chivalry, and gracious charm in the life of the old South which all must love and admire. It was these historic forces — the lib-
212 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
eral, the national and the industrial — that won at Appomattox, in spite of the genius of Lee, the hero- ism of his soldiers, and the sacrifices of Southern women.
The Three Tasks of the South.
If this be the interpretation of the confused forces in that time that tried men's souls, then the three tasks confronting the South on the threshold of the new era become plain. These tasks were eco- nomic development, national integration and racial adjustment.
(1) Economic development had reference to the farm as well as the factory. The recovery of the exhausted fertility of the soil, improved methods in agriculture, mining, the introduction of factories, the improvement of highways, railroads and harbors— these were some of the aspects of material growth awaiting the elastic energies of the South. Indus- trialism and the enrichment of rural life went hand in hand. Bravely did the people address themselves to these inviting labors. Incitement abounded. The mild climate, the wide acreage, vast forests, untouched mineral resources, abundant water-power, cheap and plentiful labor, navigable rivers and numerous harbors, were inspiring assets in the pro- gram of progress. Especially did the fibre of the cotton plant challenge the industrial ingenuity of the South. When the grain-grower of the West has ground his wheat, he has reached the limit of what skill can do. Not so with the texture of cotton. Its fibres lend themselves to limitless skill and artistic talent of a creative character. Eealizing this, a Virginian at the close of the war locked up the des- tiny of the South in a single sentence : "If cotton is ever king, its sceptre will be a spindle." The alac- rity with which the people have responded to this unique industrial opportunity appears in the fact
EDUCATION SINCE THE WAR. 213
that South Carolina to-day stands second only to Massachusetts in the number of cotton spindles operated. Similar advances have been made in manufactures in wood, leather and iron, not to instance the progress attained in almost every form of material development.
(2) The task of national integration was tliQ legacy of the War between the States. Appornattos determined merely the fact that all the sections of this country are to be held together by the political bond. But deeper than this and more necessary thai] this is the sympathy that welds peoples into an organic union, through the feeling of loyalty to com- mon ideals and the knowledge of common interests. Like-mindedness is essential to democracy. The making of a national spirit, therefore, became the charted course of the South. The example of Robert E. Lee in this respect, as in all else, was a polar star. Localism and nationalism both have inherent virtue, and the reconciliation of the two is the duty of this day, as was the reconciliation of order and liberty the work of our fathers. When you contrast the age-long animosities resulting from, the Cromwellian period in England, you can appre- ciate the spirit of reconciliation in America whidi followed within forty years after the war, despite the blunders of reconstruction. The effort of the South to be released from its political isolation and to resume its rightful part in national responsibil- ities must necessarily succeed, since this region is loyally devoted to the flag of our great republic.
(3) Eacial adjustment is the distinctive task of the South. How to enable two races as diverse as the whites and blacks to live upon the same soil in the spirit of mutual helpfulness is a problem that taxes the utmost resources of the statesman and the Christian. Difficult it would have been, if it
214 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
had been presented in its simplest form; aggravated as the racial situation in the South now is by the effects of war and reconstruction, it seems to saga- cious students of affairs, like John Morley, as a veri- table Sphinx's riddle. Yet this problem conditions the life of the cotton states. Slavery was merely one stage in the continuous effort of racial adjust- ment. It is becoming more and more plain that the negro question does not lend itself to treatment by the quick stroke of a surgeon's knife, as some were once fain to conceive; but it is to be worked out through long and slow social processes. Hence it is that in the rearing of a backward race we are trusting more and more confidently to the influence of training — training in the habit of work, in thrift, in self-reliance, and, in a word, in the basal lessons of life. In the ascent from savagery to civilization the negro under slavery -mderwent a discipline that stood him in good stead for the higher duties open- ing to him in freedom. That discipline having passed away as obsolete, the chief burden of the development of the black man falls upon the school. The school must therefore supply all the elements of training which the plantation under the old order afforded to the slave, and in addition must fit the negro for freedom by energizing his will, conscience, respect for law, and desire to live at peace with his neighbors.
The African is not to be regarded as the Achilles' heel of American destiny. I have faith to believe that his presence here is of divine ordering, and that as he has had his part in the material develop- ment of the South, so he will eventually find his rightful place in the scheme of civilization. In the carrying forward of the processes of racial adjust- ment it is now recognized upon all hands that reason, conscience, and experience must be supreme in all
EDUCATION SINCE THE WAR. 215
matters pertaining to public policy, and that racial self-respect demands social segregation.
Three Educational Advances.
It was early discerned that all three of these tasks of the South — economic development, national inte- gration and racial adjustment — had to be worked out through the school. Education is therefore the epitome of the South 's problem. In accordance with these stern practical demands, progress in education has been made along three distinct lines: (1) In the schooling of the "poor whites"; (2) In the democratizing of the ideals of the higher institu- - tions of learning; (3) In the training of the negro.
As one has pointed out, under the old order in the South, slavery lifted about one million people to a position of privilege, while five or six million hum- bler folk, the so-called "poor whites," were disad- vantaged. Of course, beneath this social structure were about four million black slaves. The educa- tional facilities then existing were naturally adapted to the needs and ideals of the ruling class — large planters, merchants, and the professional guilds. The school was the counterpart of society, which was feudal. This fact appears in the system of home tuition, the superb private academy, and the clas- sical university, all of which converged to develop in the dominant class a culture of a high and exclusive type.
V \.
In marked contrast to these aristocratic seats of learning of the former period stands the democratic system of schools which has been elaborated since the war, in order to minister to the immediate needs of the masses of the people. It is from this view- point that we can best understand the purposeful- ness of the school in the present South. It throbs to-day with an energy that is not aimless, but
216 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
directed toward a self-set goal. The school makes for efficiency ; it represents a thorough-going social proc- ess; it constitutes a program of progress. Almost every forward step in the educational history of the South during the past forty years has in view the elevation of the disadvantaged whites, the democ- ratizing of the spirit of the colleges, and the painful search for the right means of training the negro in the lessons of living under conditions of freedom.
Education felt itself charged with a high indus- trial, social, and national mission. For example, the growth of the system of common schools, espe- cially in the rural districts, the creation of high schools, and the establishment of normal institutes have all sought the development of the masses of the people in the interest of economic efficiency and civic enlightenment. The transformation in the charac- ter of the colleges is marked by the changes in the courses of study, which have become more and more scientific, sociological, and historical, while at the same time the classics have continued to be fos- tered with becoming zeal. To the same effect has been the growth of the agricultural and mechanical colleges under the joint patronage of the state and national governments. For the training of the negroes, varied agencies have been employed, such as the public school, higher institutions maintained chiefly by Northern philanthropy, and the two notable centres of educational experiment at Hampton and Tuskegee.
The development of this vast system of educa- tional effort, more or less skilfully adapted to the peculiar economic, political and racial conditions of the South, constitutes the chief work of that section since the war, notwithstanding the praise that must be accorded the heroic recovery of the South from the ravages of that struggle, the mar-
EDUCATION SINCE THE WAR. 217
velous growth of industries and the political ability displayed in bringing order and progress out of a baffling situation almost without parallel. Indeed, it is futile to try to apportion praise among the statesmen, industrial leaders and educators of this region during the past generation, for the patent reason that all have worked alike for the cause of education. The educator, so far from boasting, knows full well that he has reaped the reward of an enthusiasm that has thrilled the masses of our peo pie. In the working out of this structural purpose of social efficiency, the statesman and the teacher, the industrial chief and the preacher, the farmer and the merchant, and, above all, groups of gifted women, have had a share. It is apparent, there- fore, that the expanding educational system of the South to-day is to be ascribed to the unanimity in aim and effort which our people as a whole have displayed in the achievement of a purpose basal to our own welfare and the integrity of the nation.
So gigantic an enterprise in education as this has naturally enlisted the cooperation of many agencies, both in the South and North. The prime resource has been, of course, universal taxation in behalf of the public schools, where the masses of the children are trained in skill and in civic ideals. In addition, however, to the revenues of the state and localities, there have been many other agencies in the educa- tional field, such as religious bodies and voluntary boards — for example, the Peabody Fund, the Slater Board, the Southern Education Board, the Jeanes Fund, the General Education Board, the Russell Sage Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation. In calling forth, organizing and directing these mani- fold activities to their proper ends of industrial efficiency and universal enlightenment, the people of the South have shown constructive ability of
218 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
' a high order. School improvement leagues have been planted in thousands of rural communities; state educational conventions have formulated plans and stimulated legislatures; associations of acad- emies and colleges have projected ideals and corre- lated forces; the Conference for Education in the South has for more than a decade energized every form of educational effort by the frank discussion of vital themes, engaged in by many of the most eminent men in the nation; zealous has been the advocacy of this cause by the press as a whole; wise and generous has been the policy of legisla- tures in the betterment of the schools; countless have been the sacrifices of individual men and women in every community, indeed, in every home, seeking to strengthen the school in order that it may do its perfect work in democratizing society.
Thus it will be seen that the educational activities of the South during the past forty years have been both public and private, both secular and religious, both Southern and National. Such has been the com- bination of energies devoted to the threefold educa- tional advance in this region, which has all the inspiration of hope for the future.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Andrews: Development of Modern Europe; Bruce, P. A.: T~he Sise of the New South; Bogart: Economic History of the United States; Cheyney: Industrial and Social History of England; Coman, K. : Industrial History of the United States; Cunningham: Western Civilization in Its Economic Aspects; Kohn, A.: The Cotton Mills of South Carolina; Murphy, E. G. : The Present South; Page, W. H.t The Rebuilding of Old Commonwealths; Schwill, F. : Political History of Modern Europe; Seignobos: Political History of Europe Since 1814; Wells: Eecent Economic Changes; Reports of the Con- ference for Education in the South; The South Atlantic Quarterly; Sewanee Eeview.
S. C. MITCHELL,.
President of the University of South Carolina.
HIGHER EDUCATION. 219
CHAPTER IV. HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH.
HE history of higher education in America is the story of efforts, single or combined, of state, church, and private benefactors. In the oldest institutions these factors were generally united, for the cooperation of all forces was needed. The impelling motive was the want of leaders, especially ministers for pioneer com- munities. There was no set method of procedure, no prearranged form of organization. The aim was practical, the method varied, the result the only important concern. Hence, every institution in the beginning formed a type for itself.
Early Beginnings.
In the South the first movement was naturally with the Virginia settlement. Plans set on foot by the Virginia Company of old England to found a university at Henrico came to naught. The move- ment that succeeded originated long afterwards at home. Reverend James Blair, who came to the col- ony in 1685, was sent in 1692 by the General Assem- bly to secure a charter for a college. This was secured from William and Mary, for whom the college was named, in spite of the opposition of Attorney-Gen- eral Seymour. Money was given by the king and queen to the new enterprise; it received, also, dona- tions of land, private gifts, and public revenues, so that it began its work auspiciously. The first com- mencement was held in 1700. The first building was an imposing structure, planned by Sir Christo- pher Wren. The board of eighteen was self-per-
220 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
petuating, but the head of the Church in Virginia was the head of the college, and the president and professors subscribed to the thirty-nine articles of religion of the Church of England till the American Revolution. After the Revolution it was largely controlled by the Episcopalians. The success of this institution was marked. For one hundred years it was the chief influence for culture in all the South. From its alumni came the great names in church and state that are written large in our early history.
State Movements.
The War of the Revolution strengthened the national feeling and resulted in movements in vari- ous states for establishing institutions entirely under state control. The University of North Carolina was chartered in 1789 and opened in 1795, as the result of a movement supported by the strongest political leaders. Large private gifts were made and under the guidance of Joseph Caldwell the new uni- versity soon attained great power. South Caro- lina gave a charter to the College of Charleston in 1785 and to the state college at Columbia in 1801. The sum of $50,000 was appropriated for buildings, and $6,000 per annum for expenses. Under Jona- than Maxcy and Thomas Cooper it rapidly grew in popularity and influence. The University of Georgia, chartered in 1785, progressed more slowly. In Louisiana the College of New Orleans was estab- lished in 1805, two years after the transfer of the territory to the United States. The success of this institution, which was largely local, was transient, but the state spent for it about $100,000. About $250,000 was spent between 1832 and 1844 on the College of Louisiana; also an equal amount on the College of Jefferson between 1831 and 1846, and
HIGHER EDUCATION. 221
$66,000 on the College of Franklin between 1831 and 1843. None of these efforts produced abiding results. The policy of subsidizing institutions of learning proved a failure. The University of Alabama was founded in 1831 and the University of Mississippi in 1844. Both of these institutions were distin- guished by having in their faculty the great Dr. F. A. P. Barnard, afterwards president of Columbia College, New York.
The University of Virginia has a story of its own. It was the embodiment of the ideals and efforts of pne man. The plans of Thomas Jefferson compassed ihe whole field of education from the grammar school to the university, but it is with the last that his memory is forever linked. His first thought was a reformation of his alma mater, William and Mary College, but this was abandoned as imprac- ticable. In 1794 he proposed the transfer of a large part of the University of Geneva to Virginia, but this idea met with no support. In 1800 he outlined clearly in a letter to Dr. Priestley his idea of a mod- ern university of first rank. But this idea was to be worked out slowly and with much opposition. The founding of Albemarle Academy was a significant point in this history. Mr. Jefferson doubtless secured the location of the Academy near Char- lottesville. In 1816 the name was changed to Central College. In 1818, through the efforts of Joseph Carrington Cabell, who was an indispensable assist- ant in this whole fight, the Virginia legislature passed its first bill providing for the establishment of a university at a site to be fixed by commission- ers, and $15,000 per annum was appropriated for the institution. Jefferson secured its location at Char- lottesville over the competition of Lexington and Staunton. In January, 1819, Central College was
222 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
legally merged into the University of Virginia. Now began the real preparation for the opening of the new institution, a task which absorbed Jefferson's mind and heart till his death. This work included several parts: (1) The physical plant, which was to be a worthy home for a great enterprise; (the initial expenditure proposed was about $200,000; the amount expended up to 1826 was about double that sum) ; (2) the securing of the most eminent professors that could be gotten in this country or in Europe; (3) mapping out a course of study far in advance of prevailing systems; (4) providing adequate financial support. The new university was opened to students in 1825 with seven of the eight original schools in successful operation. Dr. Adams well says : "It would be difficult to find in our entire educational history anything more heroic than that brave fight for the University of Virginia." Some special features that have given the University of Virginia a marked influence on Southern education are as follows: (1) The high scholarship of the teaching body; (2) severe standards required for degrees ; (3) the grouping of subjects into independ- ent "schools"; (4) the elective system; (5) the honor system of student government. For these and other reasons the influence of the University of Virginia on Southern institutions has been marked, and its methods have been widely imitated, some times even without due discrimination.
Early Religious Efforts.
The religious aim and motive has given the chief impulse to educational effort at all stages of our history. The influence was present at the estab- lishment of Harvard, and Reverend James Blair cited the education of ministers as one of the chief
HIGHER EDUCATION. 223
purposes of William and Mary College. In the early days this aim expressed itself mainly through the individual efforts of cultured ministers. Thus colleges were established, not usually under definite ecclesiastical control, but in sympathetic relation- ship to the churches and with strong emphasis of religious as well as intellectual training. Many of these colleges grew out of schools and in their begin- nings most of them were nothing more. Princeton, then Nassau Hall, was the great teacher of these leaders, sending them forth as missionaries of cul- ture as well as religion into Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina. The Scotch- Irish population afforded a fruitful field for this development of the richest life of the Presbyterian Church. In the absence of professional teachers, the ministers of the gospel occupied a double field, and the log schoolhouse or the log college was no less a throne of power than the pulpit itself. Pages might be filled with the names of these pioneer leaders.
Washington and Lee University traces its begin- ning to a private school called Augusta Academy, established in 1749. The change of name to Liberty Hall attests the spirit of the Revolution. In 1779 the school was established near Lexington and was under the care of the Hanover Presbytery. In 1782 the Virginia legislature gave it a charter with a self-perpetuating board of trustees. In 1796 it received from George Washington one hundred shares of stock in the James Kiver Company, where- upon the name was changed to Washington Acad- emy. A further change of name was made to Wash- ington College in 1813, and to Washington and Lee University in 1871.
When the Hanover Presbytery took over the care
224 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
of Liberty Hall it also undertook the foundation of a similar academy in Prince Edward county, which was opened in January, 1776. .The first name of Prince Edward Academy was changed in 1777 to Hampden and Sidney in memory of two English patriots. In 1783 a charter was issued to the institu- tion as a college. The spirit of the time was indi- cated in the proviso that no person should be elected professor "unless the uniform tenor of his conduct manifests to the world his sincere affection for the liberty and independence of the United States of America. ' ' The charter of the institution has never been changed, but the historic connection with the Presbyterian Church is recognized in the fact that the synod of Virginia is allowed to nominate members for election by the board of trustees.
Somewhat similar was the movement that resulted in the establishment of the earliest institutions in Kentucky and Tennessee. Transylvania University grew out of a consolidation of Transylvania Semi- nary and Kentucky Academy. It was chartered by the General Assembly of Kentucky in 1798 and flourished for half a century. It was in 1865 consolidated with Kentucky University under the control of the Christian denomination. In 1908 the old name of Transylvania University was restored by act of the legislature.
The movement in Tennessee was the work of four Presbyterian ministers, Samuel Doak, Thomas B. Craighead, Hezekiah Balch and Samuel Carrick ; the first three were trained at Princeton, Samuel Car- rick at Augusta Seminary. Samuel Doak established an academy near Jonesboro about 1780. This was chartered in 1795 by the Territorial Assembly under the name of "Washington College. In 1818 Doak removed to Tus;\ham and with his son opened Tus-
HIGHER EDUCATION. 225
culum Academy, chartered as a college in 1842. Greenville College was chartered in 1794 with Heze- kiah Balch as its first president. In 1868 it was united with Tusculum under the title Greenville and Tusculum College.
Blount College at Knoxville was named after Gov- ernor Blount and chartered in 1794 with Samuel Carrick as its first president. By its charter the college was made strictly non-denominational. The gift of fifty thousand acres of land by Congress in 1806 occasioned the transfer of all the property of Blount College to the newly chartered East Tennes- see College, which name was changed to East Tennessee University in 1840.
Davidson Academy was established by the North Carolina legislature in 1785 and opened the next year with Thomas Craighead as president. The school was located about six miles east of Nashville and the state of North Carolina gave the new acad- emy two hundred and forty acres of land adjoining Nashville on the south. In 1806 the academy was changed to Cumberland College and was made the beneficiary of fifty thousand acres of land by the same congressional grant that gave this amount of land to East Tennessee College. In 1809 by act of the legislature the college was fixed as an undenomi- national institution. A great future seemed to open out for this institution with the coming of Philip Lindsley as president in 1824, which position he ac- cepted in preference to the presidency of Princeton. In 1826 the name was changed to University of Nashville after an unsuccessful effort to secure the name University of Tennessee. Already before the war the institution had greatly declined. Since the war it has achieved new distinction as the home of the Peabody College for Teachers.
Vol. 10—15
226 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH. Later Denominational Foundations.
Most of the institutions named originated under religious auspices but without church control. A more distinct denominational influence caused the establishment of a number of institutions a genera- tion later. This was due to two causes. In the first place the denominations had grown stronger and their ecclesiastical organizations were able to assume responsibility for new enterprises. In the second place the state universities which had grown rapidly were thought by some to be indifferent to religion. This movement was not left to the Presbyterians alone but was shared in by others, especially by the Methodists and Baptists, both of which denomina- tions had grown strong in the South. One of the earliest of these foundations was Center College in Kentucky, which was chartered in 1819 and placed under direct control of the Presbyterian Synod of Kentucky in 1824. Other Presbyterian institutions were Davidson College, North Carolina, founded in 1837, and Erskine College, Seuth Carolina, 1839.
The Baptists established Bichmond College, Vir- ginia, in 1832; Wake Forest College, North Caro- lina, 1834; Mercer University, Georgia, 1837; How- ard College, Alabama, 1841 ; Furman College, South Carolina, 1852; Baylor University, Texas, 1845; Southwestern Baptist University, Tennessee, 1847.
The Methodist Church began its work for higher education with the establishment of Cokesbury Col- lege in Maryland, now long dead. Kandolph-Macon College in Virginia was chartered in 1832; Emory and Henry College, Virginia, in 1838; Emory Col- lege, Georgia, in 1837; Centenary College, Louisiana, in 1&41; Trinity College, North Carolina, in 1859; Wofford College, South Carolina, in 1854; Southern University, Alabama, in 1859. Space does not allow
HIGHER EDUCATION. 227
any detailed discussion of the early history of any of these institutions, most of which still live and flourish.
General Character of Ante-Bellum Colleges.
Most of the institutions named had small financial resources. There was no essential difference between colleges and universities. The state institutions chose the latter title and this was imitated without regard to the character or work of institutions so designated. At first the oldest colleges were merely high schools. Teachers were few, sometimes only two or three, and tuition fees the only source of revenue. Endowments grew slowly. Some institu- tions perished, but most of them have been endowed with a marvelous vitality, surviving fire and sword, pestilence and famine. Money was raised by various devices. Lotteries were specially favored and seemed almost reserved for educational and philan- thropic enterprises. Some of the early institutions of Louisiana received proceeds of licensed gambling houses. Davidson Academy operated for a while a ferry across the Cumberland at Nashville. Most of the church schools started on small subscriptions. The self-denial of their professors is one of the most significant facts in their history.
The attendance of students was fairly good, bet- ter in the South than in the North in proportion to free white population. The colleges of the North also had many Southern students, especially Prince- ton, Harvard and Yale. Students were prepared for college in private academies which existed in large numbers throughout the South. The standards of admission were neither high nor rigid, and con- cerned only some training in the classics and in arithmetic and algebra. The first half of the course was given to the continuation of these subjects.
228 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
English instruction was confined to heavy treatises in rhetoric and the elements of criticism. Much attention was paid to public speaking. Logic and philosophy claimed part of the last two years. Instruction in history was meagre and incidental. There was some slight attention paid to natural philosophy, transformed later into chemistry and other special branches. In church colleges Christian evidences occupied part of the last year. The fol- lowing particulars are worthy of mention.
William and Mary College established a chair of modern languages and one of municipal law in 1779. This was no doubt through the influence of Jefferson, then one of the trustees of the college. William and Mary College established a chair of history in 1822, seventeen years before such a chair was established at Harvard. South Carolina College introduced the study of chemistry injo its course in 1811.
Dr. Cooper, president of South Carolina College, brought out an edition of Say's Political Economy for college use in 1819 and taught this subject in his institution. The same subject was taught later by Dr. Francis Lieber, who also taught history in its political and philosophical aspects. Jefferson's ideas as to a course of study were far in advance of his day and many of them were from the begin- ning embodied in the work of the University of Virginia.
Renewal of Effort After the War of Secession.
The first effect of the war was to close the doors of the Southern universities and colleges. Pro- fessors and students enlisted in the army. Those unfitted for service remained and taught a few classes, without system or order. In course of time most college buildings were occupied by one or both armies. Movable property was destroyed and endow-
HIGHER EDUCATION. 229
ments in many cases lost. At the conclusion of the war few colleges were in proper condition to open up, but many made an effort. The first problem was that of existence. There were no questions of educational theory or of standard or of college and university administration. There was the one over- whelming problem of supporting a few professors, buying a few needed books, a small amount of appa- ratus and restoring halls damaged or destroyed. As the old private academies had largely disappeared, most colleges had to provide preparatory depart- ments in which to accommodate the majority of their students. In 1877 East Tennessee University reported ninety college students and 195 prepara- tory. The University of Mississippi in the same year reported 174 college and 257 preparatory; South Carolina College, eighty-nine college and nine- ty-five preparatory. Added to this was the estab- lishment as private or denominational ventures of many inferior institutions, chartered as colleges or universities, but designed to give only a meagre high school course. The presence of these institu- tions hinders even now the adoption of sound educational standards in the South.
But there have been a few new educational founda- tions in the South that deserve especial mention. In several states the appropriation for land grant colleges was used to build up or strengthen a gen- eral university. This was true of Arkansas, where the state university was opened in 1872, and of Louisiana, where the Agricultural and Mechanical College was established in 1873. In 1877 this was united with an old foundation, dating from 1855, known as the Louisiana State University and located at Baton Eouge. The state of Tennessee accepted the provisions of the Land Grant act in 1869 and
230 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
committed the fund thus derived to the East Ten- nessee University at Knoxville. This institution without assistance from the state met the require- ments of the appropriation. In 1879, by act of the legislature, it received the name of The University of Tennessee, but it was not till 1905 that the state recognized its responsibility for the university and its obligation to provide by direct appropriation for its support and development. The Florida Agricul- tural College was established in accord with the act of Congress of 1862. This institution was opened in 1884 at Lake City. In 1905 the State University was established on this foundation, the location being changed to Gainesville. The University of Texas was provided for by act of the legisla- ture in 1858, but nothing was done to bring the university into being at that time. In the con- stitution of 1876 the university was recognized and a million acres of land were set apart for its endow- ment. Another million acres were set apart by the legislature of 1883. The act for the organization of the university was passed in 1881 and the university was formally opened at Austin in 1883. The prog- ress of the institution has been marked. It has grown rapidly in every respect and is destined to a great future.
Tulane University is the legal successor of the old University of Louisiana. This institution was recognized in the constitution of 1845 with a med- ical department established in 1834. The academic department was opened in 1846 and continued a feeble and fitful existence till 1860. The Univer- sity was reopened in 1878 and was recognized in the constitution of 1879. Yearly appropriations of $10,000 were made till 1884. The donation of Paul Tulane was made in 1882 and aggregated more than
HIGHER EDUCATION. 331
$1,000,000 The trustees of the Tulane fund took over the administration of the University of Louisi- ana, granting a scholarship to each senatorial and legislative district, and giving up the claim to the annual appropriation. In return the state exempted the university property from taxation. This con- tract, made in 1884, was ratified at a general election in 1888 and incorporated in the state constitution of 1898. Large additions to the university funds have been made for the Sophie Newcomb Memorial College for Young Women from the estate of Mrs. Xewcomb. The medical department also has become the beneficiary of a legacy amounting to about $800,000 from the estate of Mr. A. C. Hutchinson.
The University of the South, at Sewanee, Tenn., was chartered in 1858 as the result of educational efforts in the Protestant Episcopal Church. Sub- scriptions amounting to nearly $500,000 were secured, but after the war nothing was left save a large tract of land, nearly ten thousand acres, on top of the Cumberland plateau. Through the efforts of Bishop Charles Todd Quintard money was secured for a small beginning shortly after the war. In 1871 there were 114 college students and 125 in the grammar school. Instruction in theology was begun in 1873, in medicine in 1892, and in law in 1893. Many handsome buildings have been erecte'd in recent years and a high standard of work has been maintained.
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn., is in some respects the most notable educational institution established in the South since the war. The move- ment began m the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, but its success was made possible only ^rongh donations of Cornelius Vanderbilt of New 5Tork. These gifts were made through Bishop
232 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
Holland N. McTyeire, to whom was entrusted all the responsibility of establishing the new institu- tion. The first gift was made in 1872 and the univer- sity was opened in 1875. Altogether, nearly $2,000,- 000 have been given by the Vanderbilt family. Dona- tions have been made from other sources, espe- cially for the Biblical department. Citizens of Nash- ville have made substantial gifts for grounds and buildings. The university occupies a unique posi- tion as a peace offering from the North to the South. By its founder it was commissioned to strengthen ties of friendship between all sections of the country. Educationally, the peculiar distinction of Vanderbilt has been the maintenance of high academic stand- ards. In this respect the institution has been a rally- ing point for the whole South and a steadfast sup- port to a splendid group of training schools in adjacent territory.
Other institutions have been established since the war that can merely be named here. The Southwest- ern Presbyterian University, Clarksville, Tenn. ; Central University, with which Center College has been united; Grant University, now the University of Chattanooga; Southwestern University, Texas; John B. Stetson University, Florida; Hendrix Col- lege, Arkansas; Millsaps College, Mississippi, are among the most important.
Inner History of Higher Education Since the War.
The most prominent factor in educational history during the last period has been a constant and uni- versal struggle against poverty. This poverty has continued even to the present time and has limited all growth and development. This is all the more noticeable because of the great increase in the
1. College Hall, Vanderbilt University.
2. University of Tennessee, looking northward.
HIGHER EDUCATION. 233
resources of colleges and universities in other sec- tions. In the North and East private institutions have acquired large endowments and in the West state institutions have received splendid grants for buildings and current expenses. In the South higher institutions are still struggling, working bravely under serious limitations, cherishing ideals never realized. The effect of this poverty has been seen in many directions.
In the first place, the curriculum of Southern insti- tutions has remained contracted. Meagre provision has been made for new subjects thoroughly estab- lished elsewhere. It is not without difficulty that adequate instruction is offered in modern languages or in the English language as distinguished from literature. Chairs of history are by no means uni- versal. Sociology, economics, education are touched but lightly in many quarters. Instruction in special sciences lacks adequate provision for individual laboratory work.
Naturally, too, the material side of college instruc- tion is poorly provided for. The total scientific equipment of many a college could be bought for $10,000. Institutions having $200,000 or $300,000 of endowment report scientific equipment of less than $5,000. Libraries are small, poor in contents, and badly administered. In the report of the Com- missioner of Education for 1906 only four Southern institutions are credited with libraries having 50,000 volumes. Library administration is weak ; few insti- tutions use the library intelligently as an aid to college work and the annual expenditure for books is in many cases a mere pittance. Another effect of meagre resources has been persistence of low stand- ards of admission to college. Southern institutions,
234 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
being largely dependent on student fees, made pro- vision to receive all comers; none were excluded. In some cases preparatory classes were formed; in other cases the whole college work was projected on a plane far below a reasonable standard. The effect of this on schools was paralyzing. There was no place for the private academy, and public high schools, except in cities, were almost unknown until recent years. As colleges were largely doing the work of high schools, it seemed easy to establish new ones. Hence arose inferior institutions in great numbers calling 'themselves colleges or universities, doing the work of academies, and that very badly. Many such institutions exist at present and hinder constantly all educational progress. In the commis- sioner's report for 1906 the twelve Southern states, excluding Missouri, are credited with 115 colleges and universities, excluding technological institutions. A discriminating selection would reduce this number to less than fifty.
But there are distinct signs of improvement. Since 1900 great progress has been made and there is hope for still further advance. The states are waking to a sense of larger responsibility and are making more liberal appropriations for university expenses. In the ten states of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi,. North Carolina, South Caro- lina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia the income of the state universities in 1900 averaged $79,950; in 1906, $117,600. This is an increase of 47 per cent., or a total increase for one year's income of $377,000. New buildings, laboratories, libraries, lecture halls, gymnasia, etc., have been and are being erected by direct state appropriation.
Private institutions in similar manner are at work
HIGHEE EDUCATION. 235
raising funds. Special campaigns for endowment have been projected on every side and new buildings have gone up still more rapidly. The institution that has not felt the quickening influence of this move- ment is hopelessly belated. Forty-four of the best institutions in the South report endowment in 1906 averaging $370,000 to the institution. This is an increase of 60 per cent, over the figures reported by those same institutions in 1900.
Another interesting achievement has been the ele- vation of the standards of admission. This eleva- tion has been brought about through several influences. One of them is the Association of Col- leges and Preparatory Schools of the Southern States. This association was formed in 1894 under the leadership of Vanderbilt University for the pur- pose of elevating standards and adjusting the rela- tions between colleges and preparatory schools. The association fixes certain minimum requirements for admission to college and these are binding on insti- tutions holding membership in the association. In 1910 these requirements will be fourteen Carnegie units, which is the recognized universal ctandard. This affects all colleges and universities belonging to the association. Another potent influence for improving standards has been the appointment by several religious denominations of educational com- missions to bring about this end. Especially cred- itable is the work that has been done by the Southern Methodist Church. But the most powerful stimulus of all has come from the Carnegie Foundation. The frank but fair statements of fact sent out by this body, the definition of a college made as the prime requisite for recognition, have had a telling influ- ence even on institutions not included in the scope of Mr. Carnegie's benefaction.
236 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
As a result of all this the educational situation in the South is beginning to clear up. The future will make easier the task of true advancement. Distinc- tions will be plainer, definitions more exact, classifi- cations more just. Higher institutions will find their work and position recognized and will be enabled to go still higher. To this class will belong all state universities and the best of the denominational or private institutions. Feebler institutions will fall into a second class whose work will be clearly differ- entiated from that of the first class. Some of these weaker institutions will limit their endeavors and fill the position of junior colleges. In this way they will adjust themselves to their environment and fill an important place in a progressive system. Some of them will die, but most of them will go their own way, not sharing common ideals nor aiding in com- mon tasks. With this improvement in college stand- ards will come great changes in high school work. Public high schools will be established even in rural districts. These will be supplemented by private academies even more perfectly correlated with higher institutions than the public schools can be. This will result in larger numbers prepared for col- leges and in larger attendance on all higher institu- tions. This will in turn call for more and better equipment, bigger and better colleges.
In the meantime, the Southern University, the home of graduate students in large numbers, the source of intellectual life in its highest forms, the place for all original investigations, the centre for a group of high professional schools, the possessor of great laboratories and richly stored libraries, the pride of a whole section, the inspiration of a whole nation, waits to be created in the South. Creditable foundations have been laid, but the superstructure remains for the future.
UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES, ETC. 237
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — The most valuable material for studies in this subject is found in the series of Histories of Education, edited by Dr. Herbert B. Adams and published as circulars of information by the United States Bureau of Education. An extended bibliography of higher education in the United States has been issued in the Columbia Library Bulletin No. 2. See also Dexter: History of Edu cation in the United States (1904) and Thwing, Charles F. : A His- tory of Higher Education in America (1906).
JAMES H. KIRKLAND,
Chancellor of Fanderbilt University.
CHAPTER V.
UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES OF THE SOUTH.*
Preface.
IGHER education in the South traces its origin back beyond the American Revolution. It has developed as the fortunes of the people developed. The tragedy of the War of Secession checked its growth for more than a gen- eration. Indeed the status of higher education a quarter of a century after the war, as was the case with all other movements expressive of the higher life of the people, had not reached the point from which it receded when the war began. A new era has now dawned, and the growth and development of higher education in the South is destined to be steady and rapid.
The Beginnings of Higher Education.
The oldest educational institution in the South, and, next to Harvard, the oldest in America, is the
* The writer desires to acknowledge the valuable assistance of Prof. John H. Latane, of the Chair of History, Washington and Lee University, in the collection of the material of tbis article.
238 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
college of William and Mary, chartered in 1693. The charter was procured by Commissary Blair, the representative of the Bishop of London in Vir- ginia, who was sent to England in 1691 for that purpose by the colonial Assembly. The English government gave to the college money and land. It also appropriated to its use a tax of one penny on every pound of tobacco exported from Virginia and Maryland, together with all fees and profits arising from the office of surveyor-general. Later an export tax on furs and skins was levied for the support of the college, and still later an import tax on all liquors. After the Revolution one-sixth of the fees received by all public surveyors continued to be paid into the college treasury down to the year 1819. The motives which led to the founding of William and Mary are revealed in the language of the Assembly asking for a royal endowment ' ' to the end that the Church of Virginia may be furnished with a seminary of ministers of the gospel, and that the youth may be piously educated in good letters and manners, and that the Christian faith may be propagated amongst the western Indians, to the glory of Almighty God." The object sought in the establishment of Harvard College was expressed in the charter of that institution in very similar terms. By its charter the organization and government of William and Mary were entrusted to a self -perpetu- ating board of eighteen trustees resident in the colony. The Bishop of London was the first chan- cellor. The close dependence of the college on both church and state is shown by the fact that down to the Revolution the office of president was always filled by the Bishop's commissary, or deputy, in Virginia — the head of the college and the head of the church thus being one and the same man.
UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES, ETC. 239
William and Mary became a great school of churchmen and statesmen. Among the statesmen educated there were Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Carter Braxton, Thomas Nelson, George Wythe, Peyton Randolph, John Tyler, Edmund Eandolph, Beverly Randolph, John Mercer, James Monroe, John Blair, and John Marshall. Washing- ton was commissioned a surveyor by William and Mary in his youth, and later served the institution in the honorary position of chancellor, succeeding the bishops of London, who had held that office con- tinuously from the founding of the college to the Revolution.
The decline of William and Mary after the Revo- lution was due to many causes: (1) The removal of the capital to Richmond; (2) the cession to the national government of Virginia's western lands, out of which states have been carved and state uni- versities and agricultural colleges created; and (3) the founding of the University of Virginia.
During the War of Secession the college was burned and its apparatus destroyed. The college was in part rebuilt and reopened for a time after the war, but was finally forced to close for lack of funds. In 1887 it was revived through state aid, with a normal department attached, and it has since been partly reimbursed for its losses by a grant from the Federal government. More recently it has been taken over by the legislature of Virginia as a state institution, and is prospering in its work.
The second oldest educational institution in the South is Washington and Lee University, which traces its beginnings back to the Augusta Academy, founded in 1749, though it was not chartered as a college until 1813, while Hampden-Sidney received a college charter in 1783. Augusta Academy, estab- lished first about fifteen miles southwest of the
240 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
present city of Staunton, was finally located in 1780, with the title of Liberty Hall, in the immediate vicinity of Lexington. Founded by the Scotch-Irish, it was for a time under the care of the Presbytery of Hanover, but in 1782 it procured a charter from the legislature of Virginia as Liberty Hall Acad- emy, with a self-perpetuating board of trustees. It never afterwards had any organic connection with any religious body. In recognition of the generous donation by Washington of the shares of stock in the James Eiver Canal Company, presented to him by the legislature of Virginia, the name of the school was changed by act of legislature in January, 1798, to Washington Academy, and in 1813 to Washing- ton College. At the close of the war Gen. Robert E. Lee accepted the presidency of Washington College, and it at once became one of the most celebrated colleges of the South. General Lee's acceptance of this position made a profound impression on the whole country, and attracted students from every Southern state, and a few from the North. He con- tinued to direct the affairs of Washington College until his death in 1870. He secured for the college large gifts of money, and made it a strong institu- tion, of wide influence and leadership. His remains lie in a mausoleum in the rear of the college chapel and over them is placed Valentine's recumbent statue. In 1871 the name of the institution was changed to Washington and Lee University. It is now perhaps the most representative institution of higher learning in the South, more than one-half of its students being drawn from the Southern states, outside of Virginia. It has in recent years grown in national character, fully one-half of the Northern states east of the Mississippi patronizing it.
Hampden-Sidney College came into existence under the auspices of the Hanover Presbytery as
1. Main Building, Wofford College.
2. Washington and Lee University.
UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES, ETC. 241
Prince Edward Academy, and was opened to stu- dents in January, 1776. It was founded by Samuel Stanhope Smith, a native of Lancaster county, Penn., and a graduate of the College of New Jersey. The name was changed in 1777 to Hampden-Sidney Academy and in 1783 it was chartered as a college by the legislature of Virginia. Although under a self-perpetuating board, Harnpden-Sidney has always continued in close touch with the Presby- terian Church, and has recently established an organic connection with that body.
The Scotch-Irish were very solicitous about the education of their children and were very active in founding schools and colleges, particularly in Ten- nessee and Kentucky. Transylvania Seminary was chartered by the Virginia Assembly in 1783, and there were conferred upon it 12,000 acres of land in addition to three confiscated estates of Tories amounting to 8,000 acres. Among the trustees were George Eogers Clark, Isaac Shelby and Thomas Marshall. In 1798 the legislature of Kentucky passed an act uniting with the Seminary the Ken- tucky Academy, which had been chartered four years earlier, and the name of the new institution was changed to Transylvania University. In 1841 it came under the control of the Methodist Church. At the close of the war Transylvania University was consolidated with Kentucky University, then located at Harrodsburg, under the control of the Christian Church. The consolidated university was opened at Lexington Oct. 2, 1865, and continued to be known as Kentucky University until 1908, when by act of legislature the name was changed back to the old historic one of Transylvania University. The institution is under the patronage of the Chris- tian Church.
In 1794 Blount College was chartered by the
242 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
legislature of Tennessee and located near the present city of Knoxville. In 1807 it was merged with East Tennessee College, which became in 1840 East Tennessee University, and finally, in 1879, the Uni- versity of Tennessee.
Other foundations of this period in Tennessee were Washington College (1795), and Tusculum College (1794). The University of Nashville traces its origin back to the year 1785.
Three well-known colleges which were founded in the Eighteenth century and have had a continuous existence are the College of Charleston, founded in 1790, Washington College, Maryland, founded in 1783, and St. John's College, Maryland, founded in 1789. These institutions were established on a non-sectarian basis, and supported liberally for several years by state aid. The two last mentioned were federated as the University of Maryland for several years, but this scheme fell through, and the appropriations were withdrawn. Later the legis- lature resumed the appropriations to St. John's College and has continued them, though somewhat irregularly, to the present time.
The universities of North Carolina and Georgia, which trace their beginnings back to the Eighteenth century, will be considered under the next head.
State Universities.
The state university in the South, as in the West, is rapidly growing to power. It is assuming, as it should, the leadership of the public school system in each state.
The University of North Carolina has had a con- tinuous existence on the same site and under the same name for a longer period of time than any other state university in the South, or in the entire United States. The charter was granted in 1789,
UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES, ETC. 243
Chapel Hill was selected as the site in 1792, the cor- nerstone was laid in 1793, and the institution opened in 1795. At first the faculty consisted of only one professor and a tutor.
The University of Tennessee, as we have seen, traces its origin back to Blount College, which was founded in 1794. The present site was selected in 1826. In 1869 an agricultural and mechanical col- lege was established as a department of the East Tennessee University, and that institution was thus made the recipient of the public lands donated by the United States government under the Morrill act of 1862. This made it possible to begin the build- ing of a state university. Ten years later the present title, University of Tennessee, was adopted.
The University of Georgia had its origin in a charter granted by the state legislature in 1785, but as the only foundation was "an unproductive, and, for the most part, uninhabited tract of land," it was several years before anything was done. Finally, in 1801, the present site of Athens was chosen, and during the same year Franklin College opened. Out of this institution grew later the Uni- versity of Georgia. Georgia's share of the funds arising from the sale of public lands under the Mor- rill act of 1862 was transferred to the trustees of the University of Georgia May 1, 1872, and they at once opened the Georgia State College of Agricul- ture and Mechanic Arts as a coordinate department of the institution at Athens. In October of the same year the trustees of the university entered into a contract with the local trustees of the North Georgia Agricultural College, situated at Dahlonega, by which this institution became a department of the State University. In 1873, by arrangement with the local trustees of the Georgia Medical College at Augusta, founded in 1829, this institution became
244 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
the medical department of the State University. In 1867 the Lumpkin School at Athens was merged into and became the law department of the State Uni- versity. The state constitution of 1877 prohibited the appropriation of state funds for higher educa- tion to any other institution than the University of Georgia. As a result the following institutions have been established as branches of the State Uni- versity: The Georgia School of Technology, at Atlanta, established in 1885; the Georgia Normal and Industrial College for girls, at Milledgeville, established in 1889; the Georgia Industrial College for colored youths, near Savannah, established in 1890; and the State Normal School, near Athens, established in 1895.
South Carolina College, now the University of South Carolina, was chartered in 1801 and opened to students in 1805. It continued in successful opera- tion down to the war, when its work was interrupted and its buildings used as a Confederate hospital. It was reopened in 1866 as the University of South Carolina, but it suffered greatly during the recon- struction period, and in 1877 was finally closed. In 1878 it was opened again as South Carolina Col- lege, constituting for a time, with Claflin College at Orangeburg (a school for the colored race), the State University. Finally, in 1906, the name South Carolina College was changed to the University of South Carolina.
The bill establishing the University of Virginia was passed by the legislature in 1819, largely through the untiring efforts of Joseph Carrington Cabell, whose aid Jefferson had enlisted years before. Jefferson himself had been working to this end since 1779, when he introduced his first plan for a system of public education in the Virginia As- sembly. The University of Virginia was the last of
UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES, ETC. 246
Jefferson's mortal cares. He was its real founder. He planned and designed the group of buildings, and personally superintended every detail of construc- tion. The university was opened in 1825, the year before Jefferson's death. Jefferson's genius was versatile and selective. He was a close and acute observer of men and institutions as well as of natural phenomena. His educational ideas were derived largely from European sources, but adapted to meet the special needs of America. Among his first professors Jefferson selected several foreign- ers. The chairs of ethics, law, and politics were for practical reasons reserved for Americans. The most significant feature of Jefferson's university scheme was the breaking away from the old con- ventional curriculum of American colleges and the creation of separate schools, with the elective system as the basis. This elective system has been adopted in whole or in part by many other American col- leges and universities. Another contribution made by Jefferson, namely, student government, has also found its way into many other institutions.
Several of the educational policies of the Uni- versity of Virginia, such as the honor system, and the division into separate schools, each giving a certificate of graduation in that particular school, left their mark on the higher institutions of the South.
After the war the University of Virginia was greatly hampered by the lack of a permanent execu- tive head, and shared in the general depression that handicapped the whole South, though it at no time in its history yielded its position of wide influence nnd leadership. In spite of the fact that the presi- dential form had become almost universal at the South, as it had at the North, the University of Virginia clung to the older form of government
246 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
until the year 1904, when it fell into line with the practice in vogue at other institutions. It is to-day a rapidly growing institution, strong and vigorous.
The University of Alabama was established by act of the General Assembly of that state Dec. 18, 1820, which act donated to it 46,000 acres of land within the state which had recently been donated to the state by the Congress of the United States. In 1827 Tuscaloosa was selected for the site of the university, and in 1831 it was first opened for stu- dents. In 1865 the buildings were completely destroyed by a troop of Federal cavalry. The erec- tion of new buildings was begun in 1867 and instruc- tion was resumed in 1869. Through the efforts of Senator Morgan a second donation of 46,000 acres of land within the state was made by Congress in 1884, in restitution of the losses incurred in 1865. In 1907 the state legislature appropriated $400,000 to be used as a fund for the erection of new build- ings. It is now a strong institution.
State universities now exist in all the Southern states. The University of Missouri was organized in 1841; the Louisiana State University in 1860; the West Virginia University in 1867; the Uni- versity of Arkansas in 1872 ; the University of Texas in 1883; and the University of Oklahoma in 1892. The University of Florida (after several abortive attempts had been made to found such an institution in that state) was finally organized in its present form in 1905. The State College of Kentucky has recently become the State University of Kentucky.
Two rather unique state institutions deserve to be mentioned here, both of which have had a more than local influence and reputation — the Virginia Military Institute, organized in 1839, and the South Carolina Military Academy, organized in 1843. Both institutions are of a strictly military character, and
UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES, ETC. 247
both differ from the ordinary military school in being of collegiate rank. They are both state schools, modeled after West Point, both in curricu- lum and in discipline. Both rendered valiant service to the Confederacy.
The state universities of the South may be broadly classed in two groups : (1) Those of Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas — which consist of the usual academic depart- ment, with one or more of the professional schools of law, medicine, and engineering added; and (2) those of Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia, which have, in addition to the academic and professional departments, the colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts attached to them and located at the same place as a part of the same plant. These latter universities receive, in addition to state funds, the appropriations made by the Federal government under the Morrill acts. The University of Georgia stands in a class by itself. It has agricultural, mechanical, industrial, and other ''branches," organized as departments of the State University, but located at different points. In any statistical study of state universities it is important to note whether agricultural and mechanical students are included in the enumeration of students and whether Federal appropriations for such purposes are counted as part of the income. It should also be noted that, in the study of incomes of all colleges of whatever character it is necessary to inquire whether cost of living is included in the income. Many Southern colleges adopt this policy. It is frequently misleading.
Agricultural and Mechanical Colleges.
On July 2, 1862, the Congress of the United
248 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
States passed an act known as the Morrill act, "An Act donating Public Lands to the several States and Territories which may provide Colleges for the ben- efit of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts." Within a few years after the close of the war the Southern states all took steps to avail themselves of this endowment, and established agricultural and mechanical colleges, either in connection with and as a part of the state universities, as already men- tioned, or as independent institutions. These insti- tutions so established were further endowed by the second Morrill act of Aug. 30, 1890.
These appropriations have amounted since 1900 to $25,000 annually for each state and territory, with an additional allowance for agricultural experiment stations. By another act of March 4, 1907, provi- sion was made for an increase to each state and ter- ritory of $5,000 for the year 1908, and an additional sum of $5,000 annually thereafter over the amount for the preceding year until the total reaches $50,000, which shall be the fixed amount to be appropriated annually to each state and territory. These insti- tutions have not been successful in turning out any large number of farmers, though through the experi- ment stations and the general diffusion of knowl- edge, they have been of great assistance to the farm- ing class. The general tendency has been to offer general scientific training and special training in the mechanic arts. This tendency is not so marked in the North or in the West as in the South. Many young men in the South are drawn to these schools by state scholarships who later go to universities or professional schools. As the Federal law provides that students of the negro race shall not be denied the benefits of these appropriations, the Southern states and Delaware have provided separate schools
UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES, ETC. 249
for members of that race, such as the Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute in Virginia, the Agricultural and Mechanical College for the Colored Kace in North Carolina, the Agricultural and Mechanical Colleges for Negroes of Alabama, etc. Some of these institutions receive, in addition, annual appropriations from the state ; others do not. The Virginia Polytechnic Institute, the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, Clemson College, the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts, the Georgia School of Technology, the A. & M. Colleges of Mississippi and of Texas, all estab- lished for white youth, have done a conspicuous and notable work.
Denominational Colleges and Universities.
During the Middle Ages, and in fact until rela- tively recent times, education was regarded exclu- sively as a function of the Church. All of our early schools and colleges were established under ecclesi- astical patronage, and even at a later period many of those that received state aid were dominated to a greater or lesser extent by some religious body. The first presidents of the universities of North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama were ministers, and the same was the case with many other insti- tutions. The gradual secularization and growth of institutions receiving state aid led in time to denom- inational activity of a new kind in the field of edu- cation. About 1830 a number of colleges were founded under exclusive denominational control, and later many others were established.
The Methodists founded Randolph-Macon Col- lege, Virginia, in 1832; Emory College, Georgia, in 1836; Emory and Henry, Virginia, in 1838; WofTord College, South Carolina, in 1854; Central College,
250 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
Missouri, in 1857; Trinity College, North Carolina, in 1859; Southern University, Alabama, in 1859; Kentucky Wesleyan in 1866; Southwestern, Texas, in 1873; Hendrix College, Arkansas, in 1884, and other excellent colleges.
The Presbyterians had, as we have seen, estab- lished Hampden-Sidney in 1776, Tusculum College and Washington College, Tennessee, in 1794 and 1795. In 1882 they established Central University, Kentucky; in 1837, Davidson College, North Caro- lina ; in 1842, Cumberland University, Tennessee ; in 1850, Austin College, Texas; in 1853, Westmin- ster College, Missouri, and in 1855, the Southwestern Presbyterian University, Tennessee. There are other smaller institutions of merit.
The Baptists founded, among other colleges, Georgetown College, Kentucky, in 1829 ; Mississippi College, in 1827; Eichmond College, in 1832, the same year with Bandolph-Macon ; Wake Forest Col- lege, North Carolina, in 1834; Mercer University, Georgia, in 1837; Howard College, Alabama, in 1841; Baylor University, Texas, in 1845; William Jewell College, Missouri, in 1849; Carson and New- man College, Tennessee, in 1851; Furman Uni- versity,^ South Carolina, in 1852; Bethel College, Kentucky, in 1854; Ouachita College, Arkansas, in 1886; John B. Stetson University, Florida, in 1887; and a number of smaller colleges which are doing good work.
The Eoman Catholics established St. Mary's Col- lege, Kentucky, in 1821; St. Louis University, Mis- souri, in 1829 ; Springhill College, Alabama, in 1830 ; College of the Immaculate Conception, Louisiana, in 1847 ; Christian Brothers College, Missouri, in 1851 ; and St. Mary's University, Texas, in 1854; and a
1. Library, University of Mississippi.
2. Lyceum Building, University of Mississippi.
UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES, ETC. 251
large number of other colleges in Maryland and elsewhere.
The Christians, or Disciples, established Bacon College, afterward known as Kentucky University, in 1836 ; and Christian University, Missouri, in 1853. The Friends founded Guilford College, North Caro- lina, in 1837. The Associate Reformed Presby- terians founded Erskine College, South Carolina, in 1839. The Lutherans established Boanoke College, Virginia, in 1853; and Newberry College, South Carolina, in 1858. The German Baptists established Bridgewater College, Virginia, in 1879. The Meth- odist Protestants founded Western Maryland Col- lege in 1867. These are but a few of the institutions of this general character that here deserve mention.
After the War of Secession the Methodist Epis- copal Church (North) founded a number of colleges for the colored race — among others, Bust Uni- versity, Mississippi, in 1867; Morgan College, Mary- land, the same year ; Claflin University, South Caro- lina, in 1869; Clark University, Georgia, in 1870; Wiley University, Texas, and New Orleans Uni- versity, Louisiana, in 1873; and Philander Smith College, Arkansas, in 1877. For whites they founded, among other schools, Central Wesleyan College, Missouri, in 1864; University of Chattanooga, in 1867 ; Fort Worth University, Texas, in 1881 ; Union College, Kentucky, in 1886 ; Missouri Wesleyan Col- lege, in 1887 ; and West Virginia Wesleyan College, in 1890.
The African Methodist Episcopal established Allen University, South Carolina, in 1881; and Mor- ris Brown College, Georgia, in 1885.
The Baptists have founded for the colored race, among other similar schools, Shaw University, North Carolina, in 1865 ; Atlanta Baptist College, in 1867 ;
252 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
Leland University, Louisiana, in 1870 ; and Virginia Union University, in 1899.
A number of other denominational colleges have been established since the war, but of these only two have exercised wide leadership — namely, Vanderbilt University and the University of the South. The charter of the University of the South was granted by the legislature of Tennessee, Jan. 6, 1858, and by a strange coincidence, on the following day a charter was granted for a Central University, to be located in Nashville, under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. But neither institution was destined to be opened for years. The war upset all plans.
The University of the South was projected at a conference of the bishops, clerical and lay repre- sentatives of nine Southern states held at Lookout Mountain, Tenn., in July, 1857. Bishop Polk, of Louisiana, was the prime mover. In outlining his plans he said: "This we propose shall be a uni- versity, with all the faculties, theology included, upon a plan so extensive as to comprise the whole course usually embraced in the most approved insti- tutions of that grade, whether at home or abroad." He proposed to raise an endowment of $3,000,000, an enormous sum for those days. A tract of several thousand acres of land on the Sewanee Mountain was soon secured, and $500,000 subscribed. In 1860 the cornerstone of the central building was laid. At the close of the war Bishop Quintard, who had just been elected Bishop of Tennessee, revived the plans of the warrior-bishop, who had sacrificed his life in the Confederate cause, and by persistent efforts in every part of the South, in the North, and in England, secured sufficient funds to erect temporary buildings and open the university in September,
UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES, ETC. 253
1868. The growth of the university has been steady, and it has become known far and wide as a center of culture. It has one of the finest libraries in the South.
Influenced, no doubt, by Bishop Quintard's suc- cess, Bishop McTyeire of the Methodist Church revived the idea of the Central University. In 1873 he persuaded Cornelius Vanderbilt (their wives being relatives) to make a donation. He gave $500,000 at the start, and subsequently increased the amount to $1,000,000. The university was opened in 1875. Its growth has been rapid. It is centrally located, and is a leading institution. Its first chan- cellor was Landon C. Garland. He was succeeded in 1893 by the present chancellor, James H. Kirk- land, who has led the fight in the South for advanced college entrance requirements. The Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Southern States was organized in response to an invitation sent out by a committee of the faculty of Vanderbilt University.
Non-Sectarian Colleges and Universities.
Washington and Lee, Tulane, The College of Charleston, Washington University, George Wash- ington University, and a few small institutions com- plete the brief list of Southern Colleges that are independent of either church or state, unless we include the Central University of Kentucky, and the Eandolph-Macon Woman's College, recently accepted by the Carnegie Foundation.
The Johns Hopkins University draws many of its students from Maryland and the South, and has had a marked influence on the development of higher education in the South. It has, of course, been the leading university force during the past quarter of a century. It should be mentioned in this sketch.
254 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
It is too well known to require more than mere mention.
Tulane has performed a great service for the southwestern section of the Southern states. It deserves to rank among the foremost institutions of the country. It is a true university in ideal and spirit. It occupies a strategic position, and with its present progressive, farseeing policy, it is assum- ing a position of acknowledged leadership.
The Higher Education of Women.
"Wesley an Female College, of Macon, Ga., founded in 1836, claims to be the first institution in the world to give academic degrees to women.
Hollins Institute, Bandolph-Macon Woman's Col- lege, Sophie Newcomb, Agnes Scott College, Mary Baldwin Seminary, Sweet Briar Institute, Converse College, Baptist University (Raleigh), Presbyterian College (Charlotte), Ward Seminary, and scores of other colleges for women are making rapid progress. Each one of the Southern states has established one or more excellent normal schools for women. Some of the states have provided free college courses in those institutions. The Peabody College, at Nash- ville, serves the entire South. It is about to be strengthened in such a way as to give it even greater power than it has hitherto possessed.
The following state institutions admit women: Alabama Polytechnic, University of Alabama, Uni- versity of Arkansas, University of Kentucky, Louis- iana State University, Mississippi A. & M., Uni- versity of Mississippi, University of Missouri, Uni- versity of North Carolina, University of South Carolina, University of Tennessee, University of Texas, University of West Virginia. Many private and denominational colleges adopt the same policy.
UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES, ETC. 255 The Higher Education of Negroes.
The Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute and the Tuskegee Institute, both of them noble foundations, have perhaps done the most conspicu- ous work in the higher education of the negro. There are, however, numerous other collegiate, normal, agricultural, mechanical and industrial institutions in every section of the South which are doing excel- lent service. Many of them have already received notice in this article. Among these we should make special mention of Atlanta University, Shaw Uni- versity, Virginia Union University, and Fisk Uni- versity, Howard University (Washington), and Berea College (Kentucky), which provides instruc- tion for both races.
Conclusion.
No attempt has been made to mention, in this brief discussion, all the deserving colleges of the South. Our effort has been to trace historically the general movement in higher education, the various forces behind it, and the forms under which it has developed. The following list of universities and colleges, with the date of their founding, shows the progress and present attainment of the South in institutions devoted to higher education. The list is, of course, not exhaustive, but gives a fair view of what has been done.
STATE UNIVERSITIES.
1831 — University of Alabama. 1803 — University of South Caro- 1872 — University of Arkansas. lina.
1800 — University of Georgia. 1794 — University of Tennessee.
1905 — University of the State of 1883 — University of Texas.
Florida. 1825 — University of Virginia.
1860 — Louisiana State University 1867 — West Virginia University.
and Agr. and Mech. College. 1790 — College of Charleston, S. C. 1848— University of Mississippi. (City.)
1841 — University of Missouri. 1843 — South Carolina Military 1795 — University of North Caro- Academy.
lina. 1S39— Virginia Military Institute.
1892— University of Oklahoma. 1693— College of William and Mary.
256 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
DENOMINATIONAL COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES.
METHODIST EPISCOPAL, SOUTH. METHODIST EPISCOPAL (NORTHERN).
1859 — Southern University. 1884— Hendrix College, Ark. 1836 — Emory College, Ga. 1891 — Warthen College, Ga. 1866 — Kentucky Wesleyan College,
Ky.
1892— Millsaps College, Miss. 1857 — Central College, Mo. 1872— Morrisville College, Mo. 1859— Trinity College, N. C. 1873— Weaverville College, N. C. 1854— Wofford College, S. C. 1875 — Vanderbilt University, Tenn. 1891 — Polytechnic College, Fort
Worth, Tex. 1873 — Southwestern Univers i t y ,
Tex.
1832 — Randolph-Macon College, Va. 1838 — Emory and Henry College,
Va. 1888 — Morris Harvey College, W.
Va.
1877 — Philander Smith College,
Ark. (Col.)
1870— Clark University, Ga. (Col.) 1886 — Union College, Ky. 1873 — New Orleans University, La.
(Col.)
1867 — Morgan College, Md. (Col.) 1867 — Rust University, Miss. (Col.) 1887 — Missouri Wesleyan College,
Mo. 1864 — Central Wesleyan College,
Mo. 1869 — Claflin University, S. C.
(Col.) 1867 — University of Chattanooga,
Tenn. 1881 — Fort Worth Univer s i t y ,
Texas. 1873 — Wiley University, Texas.
(Col.)
1890 — West Virginia Wesleyan Col- lege, W. Va. 1904 — Epworth University, Okla.
AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL.
1885 — Morris Brown College, Ga. 1881 — Allen University, S. C. (Col.) (Col.)
METHODIST PROTESTANT.
1867 — Western Maryland College, Md.
PRESBYTERIAN.
1872 — Arkansas College, Ark.
1822 — Central University of Ken- tucky.
1853 — Westminster College, Mo.
1875 — Park College, Mo.
1868 — Biddle University, N. C. (Col.)
1837 — Davidson College, N. C.
1894 — Henry Kendall College, Okla.
1880 — Presbyterian College of South Carolina, S. C.
1855 — Southwestern Presbyterian University, Tenn.
1794 — Greenville and Tusculum Col- lege, Tenn.
1842 — Cumberland Univ e r s i t y , Tenn.
1795 — Washington College, Tenn.
1850 — Austin College, Texas.
1869 — Trinity University, Texas.
1893 — Fredericksburg College, Va.
1778 — Hampden-Sidney College, Va.
1904 — Davis and Elkins College, W. Va.
UNITED PRESBYTERIAN.
1883— Tarkio College, Mo. 1875— R'noxville College, Tenn.
CUMBERLAND PRESBYTWUAN.
1891 — Arkansas Cumberland Col- lege, Ark.
A. R. PRESBYTERIAN.
1839 — Erskine College, S. C.
UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES, ETC. 257
BAPTIST.
1841 — Howard College, Ala. 1886 — Ouachita College, Ark. 1887 — John B. Stetson University,
Fla. 1867 — Atlanta Baptist College, Ga.
(Col.)
1837 — Mercer University, Ga. 1829— Georgetown College, Ky. 1875 — Liberty College, Ky. 1854— Bethel College, Ky. 1870 — Leland University, La. (Col.) 1827 — Mississippi College, Miss. 1849— William Jewell College, Mo. 1865 — Shaw University, N. C.
(Col.)
ROMAN
1892 — St. Bernard College, Ala. 1830 — Sprlnghill College, Ala. 1821 — St. Mary's College, Ky. 1864 — Jefferson College, La. 1847 — College of the Immaculate
Conception, La. 1852 — Loyola College, Md. 1857 — Rock Hill College, Md. 1848 — St. Charles College, Md. 1808— Mt. St. Mary's College, Md.
1834— Wake Forest College, N. C. 1880 — Indian University, Okla. 1852 — Furinan University, S. C. 1851 — Carson and Newman College,
Tenn. 1890— Howard Payne Col 1 e g e ,
Texas.
1845 — Baylor University, Texas. 1879 — Bridgewater College, Va.
(German Baptist.) 1832 — Richmond College, Va. 1899— Virginia Union University,
Va. (Col.)
CATHOLIC.
1883 — Conception College, Mo. 1851 — Christian Brothers College,
Mo.
1829— St. Louis University, Mo. 1877— St. Mary's College, N. C. 1871 — Christian Brothers College,
Tenn.
1885 — St. Edward's College, Texas. 1854 — St. Mary's University, Texas.
MISCELLANEOUS.
1836 — Kentucky University, Ky. (Christian.)
1853— Christian University, Mo. (Christian.)
1890— Elon College, N. C. (Chris- tian.)
1891 — Lenoir College, N. C. (Luth- eran.)
1837— Guilford College, N. C. ( Friends. )
1858 — Newberry College, S. C. ( Lutheran. )
1866— Fisk University, Tenn. (Con- gregational. (Col.)
1868 — University of the South, Tenn. (Protestant Episcopal.)
1873 — Texas Christian University, Texas. (Christian.)
1853 — Roanoke College, Va. (Luth- eran. )
NON-SECTARIAN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES.
1866 — Pritchett College, Mo.
1859 — Washington University, Mo.
1873— Drury College, Mo.
1785 — University of Nashville, Tenn.
1848 — Burritt College, Tenn.
1849 — Hiwassee College, Tenn.
1749 — Washington and Lee Univer- sity, Va.
1869 — Atlanta University, Ga. (Col.)
1857 — Bowdon College, Ga.
1855 — Berea College, Ky.
1870 — South Kentucky College, Ky.
1834— Tulane University, La.
1789 — St. John's College, Md.
1783 — Washington College, Md.
1876 — Johns Hopkins University, Md.
COLLEGES OF AGRICULTURE AND THE MECHANIC ARTS EN'
DOWED BY ACTS OF CONGRESS OF JULY 2,
1862, AND AUG. 30. 1890.
1872 — Alabama Polytechnic Instl- 1841 — University of Missouri, tute.
1872 — University of Arkansas.
1884— University of the State of Florida.
1872 — Ga. State Col. of Agricul- ture and Mechanic Arts.
1866 — Agr. and Mech. College of
Ky.
1860 — La. State Univ. and Agr. and Mech. College.
1859— Md. Agr. College.
1880- -Miss. Agr. and Mech. Col- lege.
Vol. 10-17.
1889— N. C. College of Agriculture and Mehc. Arts.
1891— Okla. Agr. and Mech. Col- lege.
1893 — Clemson Agricultural Col- lege, S. C.
1794 — University of Tennessee.
1876 — Agr. and Mech. College of Texas.
1872 — Va. Agr. and Mech. Col. and Polytechnic Institute.
1868 — West Va. University.
258 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OP THE -SOUTH.
AGRICULTURAL AND MECHANICAL COLLEGES FOR COLORED STUDENTS.
1875 — A. and M. for Negroes, Ala. 1866 — Lincoln Institute, Mo.
1875 — Branch Normal College, Ark. 1894 — A. and M. for the Colored
1892 — State College for Colored Race, N. C.
Students, Delaware. 1S97 — Colored Agr. and Normal
1887— Florida State Normal and University, Okla.
Industrial School. 1896 — Colored Normal, Indust.,
1S90 — Georgia State Industrial Col- Agr. and Mech. College, S. C.
lege. 1879 — Prairie View State Normal
1887— Kentucky Normal and In- and Industrial College, Texas, dust. Institute for Colored Per- 1865 — Hampton Normal and Indus- sons, trial Institute, Va.
1880 — Southern University, La. 1891 — West Va. Colored Institute.
1887 — Princess Anne Academy, Md. 1881 — Tuskegee Institute.
1871 — Alcorn Agr. and Mech. Col- lege, Miss.
GEORGE H. DENNY,
President of Washington and Lee University.
CHAPTER VI.
THE HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN IN THE SOUTHERN STATES.
HE development of the higher education of women in the Southern states naturally falls into two periods. The first period includes the higher education of women before the year 1860, and the second, that which has developed since 1860. This division not only corresponds with the great division made in the history of the South by the War of Secession, but it also corresponds with a division in the history of the higher education of women in the country in general. This is evident when we note the fact that the collegiate work for women, which is accepted as the standard of the higher education of women to-day, began with the founding of Vassar College in 1865.
Previous to 1860, the education of women in the Southern states differed little from that in other sec- tions of the country. The higher work that was
HIGHEE EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 259
given to women was given in seminaries which usu- ally offered courses of work quite different from the courses offered to men in men's colleges. They were such courses as were judged to fit young women for their places in society. They usually emphasized a study of music and art, included the English branches, and sometimes French. Some attention was given to training in manners and in social usages. In some of these seminaries in the South very good work was done in the classics, but this was the exception, rather than the rule.
Conditions of life in the South before the war were different from those in the North, and these condi- tions affected the development of the education of women to some extent. Families were scattered on the plantations, so that a good deal of the elementary education had necessarily to be done at home under private teachers. It followed that the young women who went away to the seminaries were seldom well prepared for more advanced work.
Furthermore, the general sentiment toward the education of women was that as her place was in the home a woman should get most of her training there. A year or two away from home, spent in gaining a "finishing" course, was judged sufficient for a young woman.
The education given in the seminaries was, then, such as would naturally develop where women were irregularly and poorly prepared for advanced work, where they expected to remain in school only a year or two, and where there was little desire for the establishment of a course of training for women similar to that given to men in men's colleges.
Considering these facts, and considering the fact that the modern developments in the higher educa- tion of women came about after 1865, just when the South was suffering from the effects of the war and
260 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
of the reconstruction period, it was not strange that the struggle for the establishment of collegiate edu- cation for women of the same grade as that given to men, was not carried on in the South. Just here is the point of difference between the development of the higher education of women in the South and that which took place in the North. In the North, women were better prepared for college work, as they had secondary work in good schools which prepared young men for college. In the North there were no such depressing conditions as were experienced in the South as the result of the war, and in the North, therefore, the needed endowment for women's col- leges was forthcoming.
The South, then, has not taken a leading part in the establishment of colleges for women of equal grade with those for men. And yet, there has not been in the South an absence of appreciation of the value of such development in the education of women, nor of effort on the part of educators to work toward it, nor has there been a failure to attain really admirable work in this direction. We may say that, in contrast with the Northern leadership and remark- ably rapid development of a higher education for women similar to that previously given to men, there has been in the South an adoption of these same standards, and such a realization of them thus far as conditions would permit, with great promise for their more complete realization in the near future.
Progress Since 1860.
We shall now consider more definitely the progress that has been made since 1860 in the higher educa- tion of women in the light of its more general prog- ress in the country.
Two things combine to make a college. (1) aca- demic standards, which include entrance require-
HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 261
ments and curricula; and (2) endowment, which makes it possible to realize what is included under (1).
We may consider Southern colleges for women with reference to these two points, and, in so doing, we may compare them with the colleges that are rec- ognized as standing at the head of women's colleges in the country. The institutions which stand at the head of colleges for women may be found classed in ''Division A" by the United States Commissioner of Education. Another good group to take as a standard would be the group of colleges which form the membership of the College Entrance Examina- tion Board. Or, again, the group of colleges whose graduates are admitted to membership in the Asso- ciation of Collegiate Alumnae. Institutions included in the above groups require fourteen or more (Car- negie) units for entrance, and a college curriculum of sixty or more hours leading to the Bachelor's degree. They all have good endowment and most of them, especially those in the College Entrance Examination Board and the Association of Colle- giate Alumnas, have endowments of over half a mil- lion dollars. A few have endowments of over a million dollars.
I. Academic Standards.
First we shall consider them with reference to academic standards. We shall discuss the following groups: (a) Colleges for women whose academic standards are high; (b) coeducational colleges of high standard; (c) normal and industrial colleges; (d) colleges having no fixed standards.
Colleges for Women of High Academic Standards.
(a) Colleges belonging to this group have devel- oped in two ways. First, they have grown out of
262 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
the older institutions established as seminaries before the war, and, second, new colleges have been established since the war. Looking first at the older institutions, we may note two which are in different parts of the South.
Wesleyan College, located at Macon, Ga., was char- tered in 1836 and was opened in January, 1839. This college gave the degree of A.B. in 1840, and claims to be the first college for women in the country to give the degree. This college has a requirement of fourteen units for entrance to the college work, and a college course of four years.
On the northern border of the Southland, we find another example of the development of a college of high standing from one of the early seminaries. The Woman's College of Frederick, Md., recognized as a college in 1893, was the outgrowth of the Frederick Female Seminary, an institution which began its work as a seminary in 1843. This college has a requirement of fourteen units for entrance to the college course, and offers a course leading to the degree of B.A. which requires sixty-eight hours of work of collegiate grade.
Among the colleges for women which have been established since 1860, we may note the following:
The Woman's College of Baltimore was founded in 1884. Its requirements both in regard to entrance and college work conform to the standard set by the leading colleges.
The H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College for Women, the woman's department of Tulane Univer- sity, was founded in 1886 by the bequest of Mrs. Josephine Louise Newcomb. It has standard college entrance requirements of fifteen units, and a re- quirement of four years of college work for the degree of A.B. Its graduates are admitted as gradu- ate students in Tulane University, and are given the
HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 263
A.M. on the completion of the work required of the men students for this degree.
The Agnes Scott College, at Decatur, Ga., was founded in 1890. It requires fourteen units for entrance to the college course, and offers a course of sixty hours of college work leading to the degree of A.B.
The Randolph-Macon Woman's College, located at Lynchburg, Va., was founded in 1893. It is a part of the Kandolph-Macon system of colleges and pre- paratory schools in Virginia. This system includes besides the woman's college, a college for men and three preparatory schools, one for girls, and two for boys. The Woman's College requires fifteen units for entrance and has a curriculum of sixty hours of college work leading to the A.B. degree.
Sweet Briar College, located near Lynchburg, Va., was opened in the fall of 1906. It has the standard college entrance requirements and a four-years' col- lege course leading to the degree of A.B.
ioeducational Colleges.
(b) In addition to the women's colleges in the South which offer standard college courses, there is opportunity for women to obtain a college education in coeducational institutions of the first rank. Van- derbilt University and the universities of Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Alabama, and North Carolina admit women. The universities of Virginia and Louisiana do not admit women. The University of Georgia does not admit women to its A.B. course. The University of Missouri offered its advantages to women in 1870 ; Vanderbilt and the universities of Tennessee and Alabama in 1893; the University of North Carolina in 1896.
In this connection, the advantages accorded to women by the Peabody College for Teachers, located
264 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
at Nashville, Term., and a part of the University of Nashville, should be considered. This college was established in 1905 as the successor of the Peabody Normal College, an institution which was begun in 1875 as a normal school. Its purpose was expressed in a resolution of the Board as follows : ' ' The estab- lishment of a college for the higher education of teachers for the Southern states is essential to the completion of an efficient educational system for said states, and would be the noblest memorial to George Peabody." The college requires fourteen units for admission to the B.A. course, and the B.A. course consists of sixty hours of college work.
Turning next to the second group, namely, institu- tions whose academic standards fall below those held by the leading colleges in the country, we may note two kinds of institutions, very numerous in the South.
Normal and Industrial Colleges.
(c) There has been a marked tendency to estab- lish in the Southern states institutions of higher grade where work of a practical or industrial char- acter shall constitute an important element in the curriculum. Such institutions have not infrequently been state-supported normal schools. The first such school was established in 1884 at Columbus, Miss. Notable among these institutions is the North Caro- lina State Normal and Industrial College, located at Greensboro, N. C. The purpose of this institution is stated in its charter as follows : "The object of this institution shall be (1) to give to young women such education as shall fit them for teaching; (2) to give instruction to young women in drawing, telegraphy, typewriting, stenography, and such other industrial arts as may be suitable to their sex and conducive to their support and usefulness."
HIGHEK EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 265
This college was founded in 1891 and opened in 1892. Its foundation was due to the efforts of the late Charles D. Mclver, one of the recent leaders in the educational work in the South. Dr. Mclver has had wide influence in the South, and his judgment with reference to the need of higher education of women is worthy of note here. He says: "If it be claimed that woman is weaker than man, then so much the more reason for giving her at least an equal educational opportunity with him. If it be admitted, as it must be, that she is by nature the chief educator of children, her proper training is the strategic point in the universal education of any race. If equality in culture be desirable, and if con- geniality between husbands and wives after middle life be important, then a woman should have more educational opportunities in youth than a man; for a man's business relations bring him in contact with every element of society, and if he have fair native ability, he will continue to grow intellectually during the active period of his life, whereas the confine- ments of home and the 'duties of motherhood allow little opportunity to a woman of any culture except that which comes from association with little children. ' '
The curricula of these colleges are not equal to the courses offered by the standard colleges for women in the North, but correspond with normal school courses. They give two years or more of high school work with additional work in subjects usually included in the freshman and sophomore years of standard college work. This comparison would not be appropriate, as normal school cqurses are recog- nized as below college courses, except that these nor- mal colleges give the A.B. degree.
We may note here the fact that normal schools for girls have been very generally established and
266 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
supported by the Southern states. They are large and meet a great need in the South.
Colleges Having no Fixed Standards.
(d) The second group of colleges which fall below the accepted standard of academic work constitutes, probably, the most numerous and the most conspicu- ous class of colleges for women in the South. It includes institutions which are called seminaries, institutes, colleges, and even universities. These institutions give various degrees, most frequently the A.B. degree, for the completion of work which covers very little, if any, of the work given in the leading colleges, and which has presupposed next to nothing in the way of preparatory work. The A.B. graduates from such institutions would frequently be conditioned in entrance work if they were admitted, on their degrees, to the leading colleges. Such grad- uates would possibly be able in some instances to obtain freshman or sophomore credit in some sub- jects in the standard college, course.
It is impossible to consider these colleges in rela- tion to any one standard of academic work, as they manifest every possible variety of course. Each one has a standard unto itself. Many of them have pri- mary departments. Most of them emphasize work in music, art and elocution.
It is from a consideration of the defects of this group of colleges that there have sprung a number of criticisms, written and spoken, always protesting against the condition of education of women in the South. Such criticisms are forceful inasmuch as most of the young women in the South are in these institutions. At the same time it must not be for- gotten that in the institutions mentioned first may be found splendid opportunities for doing work of a collegiate grade.
HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 267
The conditions in the colleges grouped under (d) have corne about gradually, and must be changed gradually. No college could stand alone and insti- tute a radically different order of things, particu- larly without a far larger endowment than any one of them possesses at present. The situation is clearly recognized by the leaders in the educational work of the South to-day, and there is a definite and strong movement which shows conservative progress toward a differentiation of college and preparatory work as well as an improvement of the standards of both.
This is not the place to discuss the educational movement in the South which has been going on dur- ing the last few years, particularly since that move- ment has touched the matter of the education of women less than other educational interests of the South. Yet its effects have been felt in woman's col- lege education. They are noticeable, first, in the improved college preparation that comes with the improved high school curricula. Graduates from the best high schools in the South can now enter col- lege with fairly good preparation. They are notice- able, again, in the impetus toward higher standards given by the Southern Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools. This association admits col- leges and schools for women as well as those for men, and its gradual raising of standards has stimu- lated the Southern institutions to do their best in this regard, and has worked toward a much needed coordination of standards. This association has recently decided upon a requirement of fourteen units for entrance to college work, with a minimum of ten units for conditioned students. The following Southern colleges for women and coeducational col- leges are members of this association: Bandolph- Macon Woman's College, Sophie Newcomb Memorial
268 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
College, University of Alabama, Baltimore Woman's College, University of Texas, Vanderbilt University, University of North Carolina, University of Missis- sippi, University of Tennessee.
Further in this connection, increased interest in improving and coordinating the standards of South- ern colleges for women is shown in the formation in several states, notably North Carolina and Virginia, of state associations of colleges and schools for young women. The Southern Association of College Women, and the Southern branches of the Associa- tion of Collegiate Alumnae are also active in working toward the highest standard of college work for women in the Southern institutions.
II. Endowment.
We come now to a consideration of the second element in a college, the matter of endowment. We may omit from our consideration the endowment of the coeducational institutions of high standing, group (b), which are largely state supported, and consider only the institutions for women. Of these, those which rank highest, including only a few of group (a), are well endowed. The H. Sophie New- comb Memorial College and the Woman's College of Baltimore have endowments of over half a million dollars. Most of the colleges which are grouped under (a) have little endowment.
When we look at the group of colleges for women which we have referred to as falling below the aca- demic standard, group (d), we find that the condi- tions set forth above will be largely explained when we say that scarcely one of them has anything in the way of endowment.
In addition to this, the amount charged students for board and tuition in these Southern institutions is rarely more than three hundred dollars for the
HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 369
academic year, and frequently less. In the North this charge is never under four hundred dollars, and usually five hundred or more.
The effects of this financial condition are too clear to need more than a passing word. They are : inade- quate equipment, poorly paid teachers, cheap living in every way. Chief among the effects is the depend- ence upon patronage, which leads to great difficulty in maintaining academic standards.
Many of the colleges of group (d) are not lacking in able leadership or in excellent teachers. Many of the heads of these institutions are eager to make them either colleges of first rank or good prepara- tory schools, but owing to the lack of financial resources they cannot be independent of the condi- tions which prevent their growth.
The state normal schools and the normal and industrial schools, group (c), are the best supported institutions for women in the South. For this reason, it is sometimes said that in them lies the promise for the future with regard to the higher education of women. And yet, when we consider the fact that their curricula are not equal to the standard college curricula, and that they are founded with a view to meeting the needs of young women who have only a limited time to spend in preparation for work which they must do to earn a living, it is a question whether they will fill the need for a collegiate training for women.
In the light of these facts it is evident that the chief need of Southern education for women to-day is the development of more colleges for women which shall be able to put into effect the highest academic standards. The work done in such colleges as are referred to in (a) should be increased and that done in (d) should be diminished. To that end more col- leges should be well endowed. Such endowment
270 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
would enable Southern colleges of the type of (a) in the course of a few years to draw the main body of Southern students and take their places with the leading colleges for women in the country.
Previous to 1860, the education of women in the South was carried on, as it was in the North, in semi- naries or academies where the work was irregular and consisted of some academic work, with special emphasis upon music, art and other accomplish- ments. After 1865, when the leading colleges for women were springing up in the North, the effects of the war, together with a somewhat different atti- tude toward a college education for women, kept the South from building up rapidly colleges similar to those in the North. A gradual growth has come about, however. From the older seminaries have grown up colleges of good grade. Other colleges have been established since the war and have reached places of high standing, as is shown by the fact that they are enforcing high academic standards. The leading universities of the South, with three excep- tions, have, since the war, opened their doors to women, and women have equal rights with men in the recently established Peabody College for Teachers.
There are in the South two groups of institutions which give the bachelor 's degree, but which have not the accepted standards of academic work. These are first the normal and industrial institutions, largely state supported. The second group consists of inde- pendent colleges for women whose curricula are very diverse, sometimes covering primary and always including a large amount of secondary work, and whose entrance requirements are low.
The endowment throughout the institutions for women, as a whole, not referring to a few specific colleges, or to the state-supported normal and indus- trial schools, is entirely inadequate,, and this lack of
SECONDARY EDUCATION. 271
endowment must result in a failure to maintain high academic standards and high rank in the college world.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Conway, Clara: The Needs of Southern Women (National Education Association, Journal of Proceedings and Ad- dresses, 1884, Pt. II., p. 174f ) ; Crawford, Mary Caroline: Newcomb, and Other Colleges of the South (The College Girl of America, Bos- ton, 1905, p. 225f ) ; Howe, Elizabeth M.: The Southern Girl, a Neg- lected Asset (The Educational Review, 33: 287 f, March, 1907); John- son, Lilian W.: The Higher Education of Women in the Southern States (Proceedings Eleventh Conference for Education in the South, 1907, p. 130f ) ; Lloyd, Alice: Education for Southern Women (Pro- ceedings Tenth Conference for Education in the South, 1907, p. 2201'); Mayo, Eev. A. D.: Southern Women in the Eecent Educa- tional Movement in the South (Circular of Information No. 1, 1892, published by the United States Bureau of Education, Washington, D. C.); Smith, Charles Forster: The Higher Education of Women in the South (Educational Review, 8:287f, October, 1894; Reply, 9:187-8, February, 1895); Woodward, Mary V.: Woman's Education in the South (Educational Review, 7:466f, May, 1894).
MARY K. BENEDICT,
President of Sweet Briar College.
CHAPTER VII. SECONDAEY EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH.
N education, as in other affairs, there is often much unprofitable discussion about priority in conceiving ideas and founding institutions. It often happens that two peoples are independently engaged in the same task at the same time, each ignorant of the other's plans, and each surprised to find themselves at the same goal of success at practically the same time. On the other hand, two sets of persons may undertake the same task, in the same way or in different ways; one meeting no hindrances succeeds, the other meet- ing unforeseen difficulties fails. The same sagacity,
272 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
the same wisdom, and the same zeal may not always be crowned with the same degree of success. Edu- cation is so inseparably bound up with the other lines of the institutional life of a people, that know- ing the trend of these other lines, one can reasonably foresee the attitude a given people will manifest toward education, after the proper allowances have been made for environment.
Grammar Schools.
Knowing, as we do, the traditions and the training and the standards in religion, politics, society and industry with which the main streams of colonists in America were imbued, we could reasonably forecast the earnestness with which they set about to educate their children. Notwithstanding the mingled feel- ings of reverence and repugnance for the various forms of institutional life in the mother country, it is not at all surprising to find the schools of Europe the prototypes of those set up in America. In the South, as in New England and elsewhere, the grammar school early found a place. Naturally Vir- ginia would be the first to give attention to schools, and her lead was quickly followed by the Carolinas, and by Georgia later.
The origin and support of these schools afford an excellent insight into the sentiments and ideals of those who founded them. They were founded and supported sometimes by church, sometimes by school societies, and frequently by individuals. It was often necessary for a large planter to employ a tutor for his own children. Measured by the standards of that day, many of these schools were adequately supported, while others were given small substance. They were especially designed to prepare students for college or the university, therefore intended to
SECONDARY EDUCATION. 273
serve the well-born and well-to-do, "the directive and professional classes." While boys from the lower classes were not denied entrance to them, they were neither founded nor maintained for such boys. But few girls attended the grammar schools, except those taught by private tutors.
The grammar schools were not in any way articu- lated with the elementary schools of the time. The course of study was narrow as compared with sec- ondary courses of recent times. Latin took prece- dence over all other branches, Greek came next in importance, and a little mathematics rounded out the course. Excepting the thoroughness with which spelling and penmanship were taught, even the mother tongue found no very respectable place in the course. Such a course of study met the demands for college and university entrance, and no othe* courses were deemed desirable. It is true that, in Virginia at least, industrial education was advocated .•and decreed as early as 1646, but industrial training found no general support. In the majority of these schools there was but one teacher, or master, though in some there was an assistant to teach the less advanced pupils. As is true to-day, many of the teachers were well equipped to teach the narrow course of study, while others must have been sadly deficient, even for that day. Throughout the colonies many of the teachers were t i redemptioners, " and some were even convicts, not all of them for crimes against morals, to be sure, but for debt and the like. Many of these teachers, however, were men of the best education and the widest culture, ministers of the gospel many of them. The quality of their Reaching can be judged by the fact that their pupils ttook high stand in the leading colleges and universi^
of Europe.
y»i. ID—IS
274 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
The close of the Eevolutionary War found a changed order and changed conditions in America. The whole institutional life of a people had been transformed. Broadened religious sentiments, crystallized political principles, a cemented social organism, and an awakening industrial era gave birth to new educational ideas and efforts. The new state constitutions repeated old declarations and provisions, and contained many new ones, looking toward the establishment of state systems of edu- cation, supported wholly or in part by general taxa- tion. But it must be remembered that public educa- tion, as we think of it to-day, was scarcely dreamed of, save by a very few far-sighted and patient men. Free schools, as they were called, were founded and supported for the benefit of those unable to pay tuition, and were popularly called pauper schools. They were the elementary schools. In the secondary field the academy took the place of the grammar school of colonial times.
The Academies.
Although many academies were established and fostered by ecclesiastical bodies, and a few received public funds, the most of the academies were private schools. Their establishment was not a matter of philanthropy, and they drew their patronage chiefly from those able to pay the tuition of their boys, yet they were attended by many poor boys. In fact, students were not excluded on account of inability to pay. The main object of the academies, like the old grammar schools, was to prepare boys for col- lege. The time-honored classical course was the popular one, but as the spirit of democracy had grown since the colonial days, so the academy was a more democratic school than the grammar school.
SECONDARY EDUCATION. 275
The course of study was broader and more liberal. Latin and Greek were retained, even strengthened; mathematics was made to include surveying and navigation; natural philosophy, ancient history, and a few other subjects found recognition. Latin and Greek remained the staple subjects in these schools, as already said, and some of the tasks assigned and mastered in these two subjects would strike terror to most of our high school pupils of to-day. However, it must be remembered that these pupils did but little else. The work done in these academies was for the most part of a thorough kind ; witness so many young men going from them to enter even the junior classes at Yale and Princeton. Of course we must not forget that the standard of these institutions has been advanced since that day.
The masters of the academies were better fitted to teach than were the masters of the grammar schools. They were usually men of strong person- ality and individuality — at least those who remained long in teaching. But if we are to believe tradition or history, we must conclude that many of them were rough men as well as strong men. The disci- pline maintained in many of these academies was stern, exacting and unreasonable, not to say cruel or brutal. Flogging seems to have been a good part of the daily routine of many of them. Such discipline was popular in that day, and even now the hardships and floggings of those schools are frequently pointed to as the means by which many of the foremost men of that time were made. Perhaps hardship and even cruel discipline toughens the fiber of a " heaven- sent genius, ' ' but what of the scores of boys of fewer divine gifts who were cowed into mediocrity?
The severe discipline so frequently administered in these academies is the more remarkable when we
276 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OP THE SOUTH.
remember that girls attended them. It is reasonable to suppose that their presence in some small way softened the harshness of that discipline. The pres- ence of girls had certainly an effect upon the course of study. Their presence tended to broaden the course, and led to the establishment of girls' schools under the rather pretentious name "seminaries," and later to the founding of women's colleges. In fact, the South may justly lay claim to leadership in the establishment of institutions of higher learn- ing for girls.
In 1850 there were in the eleven states usually called the South at least 2,000 academies, with more than 3,200 teachers and more than 70,000 pupils. The fact must not be overlooked that many pupils entered these academies at a very early age — far younger than would now, under the most liberal interpretation, be called pupils of the secondary grade. Many boys of nine years of age entered these schools, and occasionally younger. Many of these academies have had so long or so conspicuous a career as to warrant special mention. For instance, Concord Academy and Hanover Academy in Virginia, David Caldwell's school and Bingham's school in North Carolina, Mt. Zion and Dr. Waddel 's School in South Carolina, the Academy of Richmond County and Sunbury Academy in Georgia, Greene Springs School in Alabama, Elizabeth Academy in Mississippi, and several other such in Louisiana, Florida and Texas.
The close of the War between the States left the educational machinery of the South paralyzed. Most of the academies had been swept out of existence, and most of the boys had neither the time nor the money to attend such schools ManjT of the colleges had closed their doors during the war, and wlie&
SECONDARY EDUCATION. 277
re-opened they found themselves without students properly prepared, hence for years they had to do preparatory work in their regular classes, or main- tain sub-collegiate classes to prepare students for the regular classes.
State Support of High Schools.
Prior to 1860 a considerable number of secondary schools had been established in the larger cities, as New Orleans and Charleston, and supported by tax- ation, but, generally speaking, the close of the war found the South without anything resembling a sys- tem of secondary schools. Some of the state con- stitutions had made no provision for the support of secondary schools by taxation, and legislatures were slow to provide such schools, even where they could do so. In the South, as in other parts of the Union at different times, occurred heated discussions over the right of the state to impose taxes for the support of any education above the elementary schools, although the states had provided for higher educa- tion for the few. Neither the old grammar school nor the academy had been supported by taxation, save in a few instances ; why should secondary edu- cation now be a matter for the state? In the mean- time the schools must be had; what was to be done?
A second time war had changed conditions, espe- cially social and industrial conditions, among the white people in the South. The necessity for popu- lar education beyond the three B's, that sacred boundary for the common herd, was felt as never before. The need was imperative, anbl the people determined to act. Between 1875 and 1900 a mar- velous impulse was given to elementary school / / growth. It was perhaps the South 's greatest edu- cational awakening, her educational renaissance.
278 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
Almost every city and town throughout the South organized its elementary schools into so-called graded schools. Hundreds of places voted local school taxes ranging from one mill to six mills upon every dollar of taxable property in such school dis- tricts, institutes for teachers were held throughout the country, normal schools for teachers were rap- idly built, and more teachers and better teachers were put into the schools. In organization, articu- lation and equipment, it is safe to assert that the elementary schools easily stand first in the educa- tional system in the South. Upon this system of common schools was erected a new secondary system, universally called the high school. Thus the academy has given way to the high school, whose prototype again is found in the Old World.
Owing to the frequent lack of means necessary to maintain a four-year high school course, the absence of a demand for so long a course, and a lingering disposition to have the colleges do secondary work, many of the public high schools for a long time have offered less than a four-year course. But active agencies are already at work which will in a few years remedy this defect. This peculiar develop- ment of the public high school leaves no gap or chasm between it and the elementary school, but one of the South 's incomplete tasks is to close the chasm between the high school and the college. At present (1909) the state universities in all the South- ern states have taken active steps toward organizing and developing the high schools, thus perfecting the "educational ladder" from the primary school to the university. In each of more than one-half the state universities there has been established recently a chair of secondary education. In nearly one-half these states the legislatures are making direct
SECONDARY EDUCATION. 279
annual appropriations to aid in the establishment and maintenance of public high schools — a signal victory over the opposition of a few years ago, and a marked advance in popular education. The pri- vate and denominational colleges are in strictest accord with the state in perfecting the public high
school.
Conclusion.
It must not be supposed that the private high school, or the private academy as some yet insist on calling it, remained out of existence. Some of the very best secondary schools of the South are among the private ones. They will continue to exist; there is a specific work for them, and they and the public schools react upon each other to the good of both. Statistics show not far from 300 private high schools with 20,000 pupils, in the South. But many of these schools are short-lived — to-day they are, and to-mor- row they are not; besides, many of the pupils enrolled in them are of elementary grade and should not be counted. Some of these private high schools are maintained exclusively as college preparatory schools. There is yet another class — schools of sec- ondary grade called by more dignified names, such as collegiate institute and even college.
The public high school is a more democratic school than was the ante-bellum academy. In the high school course of study Latin still holds an honored place, though not so commanding a place as in the old academies. There may be good and sufficient reasons for the change. Greek has lost much of its prestige. Mathematics takes even a wider range, especially in the better equipped high schools. The mother tongue, its grammar and literature, is made prominent as never in the academies, while history and some of the natural sciences are found in every
280 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
program. Modern languages do not as yet occupy a large place.
Comparatively few of the public high schools are taught by one teacher, as was often the case in the old academies. The number of pupils and the vari- ety of subjects taught in them require more teachers. In most of them the work of teaching is divided by subjects, instead of by classes. With the almost numberless professions and vocations inviting to them young men of force and capacity, relatively fewer men make teaching their life work .than in ante-bellum days. In consequence nearly one-half of the high school teachers are women. In many quarters this is regarded as unfortunate so far as it concerns the boys in the high school, not that the woman teacher is the inferior of the man, but because the boy loses the companionship and influ- ence of a strong man as his teacher at a critical period in his life. Nearly all the public high schools are coeducational.
Since the high school has come into existence in response to the demands of the people, and since only a small proportion of pupils go beyond the high school in their education, it has been called the people's college. Only in limited circles is the high school any longer looked upon as simply a prepara- tory school for college. The masses here receive their school training for intelligent citizenship, industrial efficiency and social enjoyment. For eco- nomic and social reasons the demands made upon the high school have been increasing rapidly within the past twenty-five years. Already Jn the larger cities are at least three well-defined typec o/ high school — the one commonly called literary, the ual training school, and the commercial school, taking its name from the dominant feature in it.
SECONDARY EDUCATION. . 281
high school called literary includes several courses of study, such as classical, English and Latin-scien- tific. In several Southern states distinctly agricul- tural high schools have been established, and the present outlook is that many more will be established within the next five years. Industrial progress demands increased mechanical skill, increased civic responsibilities call for a broader intelligence, and vocational training seems inevitable. The entire South is earnestly absorbed in these problems. What shall the secondary school of the next generation be ? Shall it keep separate and distinct the various types now in existence and yet to be installed? Or shall it be a school with a wide variety of courses of study, each with a dominating characteristic but liberal in its scope, and all of equal value as instruments of education'?
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Booue, Richard G. : Education in the United States (pp. 402, New York, 1893); Brown, Elmer Ellsworth: The Making of Our Middle Schools (pp. 547, New York, 1905) and Secondary Education (in Butler, Education in the United States, monograph 4, Vol. I, pp. 143-205) ; Dexter, Edwin Grant: A History of Education in the United States (pp. 656, New York, 1904) ; Monographs on the History of Education in the different Southern states, issued as Circulars of Information by the Bureau of Education, Washing- ton, D. C
WILLIAM H. HAND,
Professor of Secondary Education, University of South Carolina, Columbia, S. C.
282 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER VIII.
ELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH.
> T might be stated as one of the axioms of
history that human nature for all peoples and all historic ages is a fairly constant quantity. It is only through this assumption that we can enter into the consciousness of any nation or section and understand its life and the hidden motives which govern its activities and con- dition its development.
Even assuming that the Anglo-Saxon people have certain fundamental traits which separate them from the rest of mankind, it would hardly be pos- sible to divide American traits into Northern human nature and Southern human nature. The elementary school in the South possesses much in common with the elementary school of the world and still more in common with the American elementary school. There are no Southern principles of teaching or methods of school management The few charac- teristic elements in the development and present status of the Southern elementary school have been the results of our history, our natural environments and our social institutions.
The Problem of Elementary Education. The problem of elementary education is every- where the same. In his evolution man has developed physical, mental, and moral powers which distin- guish him and place him on a plane high above the rest of the animal creation. But there is between man and the inferior animals another difference which is just as significant. When the animal dies,
ELEMENTAKY EDUCATION. 283
lie transmits to his descendants merely the physical nature in form, structure, and instincts, which has been developed by his race and species in the struggle for existence. In addition to this each child born into the world is a potential heir to the social heritage of the race as it exists in material wealth, science, art, literature and human institutions. The keys to the outer chamber of this heritage are the subjects taught in the primary school. The universal problem of the elementary school is to place these keys in the child's possession and also to develop in him the morality and efficiency which will enable him to live in mutual peace, good-will and helpful- ness with his fellowman and coheir.
The American solution to this problem is our common school system — our most significant con- tribution to world democracy. Its basis is the fun- damental principle of democracy — all the people working together can bring greater good to each individual than any man can secure working for himself alone. The American people have decided that the state at the expense of all its citizens shall give to every child, high or low, rich or poor, an equal opportunity to master the keys which unlock to him the treasures of the social heritage bequeathed to his generation through the united struggles and labors of a common ancestry.
It is not necessary to say that this principle, now so well grounded in our law and practice, has been the result of no sudden inspiration. It has been the growth of three hundred years. Thomas Jefferson, the prophet of democracy, caught a clear vision of this land of promise which his people have struggled u century to attain. Even when prematurely crys- tallized into law by the strong personality of some farsighted statesman, it has failed in the execution
284 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
because the true spirit of democracy has not been sufficiently developed. In 1811 the South Carolina legislature passed an act establishing schools in which elementary instruction was to be imparted to all pupils free of charge, but the spirit was absent and the law became almost a dead letter. Even as late as 1855 there was violent opposition to the establishment of the common school system of Charleston ander this law for the reason that "the free schools are for the poor."
The inarch toward the conception of democracy in education has moved with unequal steps in various sections of the United States. This rate of progress has been determined partly by the character of the original settlers and partly by conditions in the col- onies and states themselves. From the beginning of American colonization there was a greater solidarity in the Massachusetts colony. The nucleus of this colony not only had a strong religious bond of union but also before coming to America had spent a time as a band of exiles in a foreign land. They were all poor alike. Their constant struggles with the hostile Indians kept them closely united. What was more natural than that they should carry into their school system the habit of cooperation which their very existence had made necessary?
The germ of the American common school, as it now exists, first developed in New England under the stress of the new conditions which confronted the struggling communities of Massachusetts ; in the South its growth was delayed because their more favorable physical environment enabled these col- onists to conform more nearly to the ideals and practice of the mother country from which they came. For we must bear in mind that England did not then have and even yet has not anything like
ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 285
the American common school system of to-day. The Southern colonists included hundreds of represent- atives from the English gentry class. John Locke even provided for titles of nobility in his constitu- tion for the Carolina colony. When the colonies became established, the rich planters lived in peace and comfort in their mansions built on the banks of the rivers which in the South were the highways of that day. Unlike the Massachusetts people they were remote from their neighbors and their life and social institutions tended to aristocracy and indi- vidualism and away from a communistic democracy. Their ideals were the ideals of England. Their sons frequently went back to the English schools and universities to complete their education. They had been accustomed to private tutors in the home, and to schools supported by the Church, by societies and guilds, and by legacies and private generosity. Nothing was more natural than that the early South- ern colonies should adopt this system of education.
Southern Interest in Education.
The fact that the schools of the South were not organized and supported like those of New England has led even as eminent a historian as McMaster to say, "In the Southern states education was almost wholly neglected. ' ' Such a piece of provincialism is utterly inexcusable in a historian. There was a deep and widespread interest in education throughout the South, but the schools were largely supported by the religious denominations, by charitable societies or by private tuition. Provision of a kind was made for the children of the poor by public appropriation and private charity.
In this day of state support we do not realize the magnitude of the work done by the early charitable
286 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
and social societies. The South Carolina Society, founded in 1737 for the free education of the indi- gent of both sexes, had funds to the amount of $137,000 in 1800. The walls of its hall in Charleston to-day are covered with tablets recording the names and gifts of donors to this cause. The Fellowship Society founded in 1752 gave $3,000 to the estab- lishment of the Normal School in Charleston in 1858. The Winyah Indigo Society of Georgetown, S. C., founded a school which for over a hundred years was the chief school for the country between Charleston and the North Carolina line. The story of its founding illustrates the early feeling for edu- cation in the Southern colonies:
"The Planters of the Georgetown district about the year 1740 formed a Convivial Club, which met at the town of Georgetown on the first Friday of each month, to talk over the latest news from London, which was never less than a month old ; to hold high dis- course over the growth and prosperity of the indigo plant and to refresh the inner man and so keep up to a proper standard the endearing ties of social life by imbibing freely of the inevitable bowl of punch. From the initiation fees and annual contributions it came to pass that about the year 1753 the exchequer became plethoric of gold and the hearts of our founders overflowed with the milk of human kindness. * * * And hence it became the question of the hour, to what good purpose shall we devote our surplus funds? As the tale runs, the discussion was brief, pertinent and solid. At its conclusion the presiding officer called on the members to fill their glasses, he wished to close the debate by a definite proposition, if it met with their approval each member would signify it by emptying his glass. He said: * 'Knowledge is indeed as necessary as
light and ought to be as common as water and as free as air. It has been wisely ordained that light should have no color, water no taste, and air no odor, so indeed knowledge should be equally pure and. without admixture of creed or cant. I move, therefore, that the sur- plus funds in our treasury be devoted to the establishment of an independent charity school for the poor.' The meeting rose to its feet, the glasses were turned down without soiling the linen, and the Winyah Indigo Society School was established. ' '*
Though established for the poor this school was attended by rich and poor alike. The influence of sudi associations has been a potent factor in the
*Rulws of Winyah Indigo Society, quoted by C. Merlwether.
ELEMENTAEY EDUCATION. 287
preparation of the people for the common school system supported by the state.
There is no denying the fact that before 1860 the free schools of the South were not held in high esteem. Any institution by law or custom designed for the poor only will be despised even by the poor. To enter a free school was to make an open confes- sion of pauperism. It was in many places ranked only a few degrees above the almshouse, with the result that the self-respecting poor shunned it and often preferred to remain in ignorance. Those who advocated these schools and supervised them were governed by altruistic motives, but the idea simply did not fit into the scheme of a democracy. In America there may be adults who have fallen by the wayside in the race for success, to whom the state or society with a hand of pity gives an alms. The children are just beginning the race ; in a democracy there are no pauper children. Education is for them not a legislative favor but a universal birthright. The best education which a whole state can give is none too good for her poorest child.
The old academies of the South were many of them excellent schools and in some respects have not yet been surpassed. The "old field" school was often good ; but the whole arrangement was without adequate supervision, was expensive and uncertain, and did not reach many of our people. The per- centage of illiteracy was high and was not decreasing.
In the later forties the spirit of the great common school revival which had been led by Horace Mann began to influence the South and in the early fifties the messages of the Southern governors contained many eloquent appeals for a state system of schools for all the children.
288 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
At this time the school systems of New Orleans, Nashville, Charleston, Memphis, Mobile and other Southern cities were established. They were suc- cessful and the idea was quickly spreading to the smaller cities and towns.
But the deluge of war and the fires of "recon- struction" swept over the South, leveling her educa- tional system, public and private ; destroying her wealth and social institutions, and leaving only the soil and the unconquerable spirit of her people. Even during the war desperate efforts were made to maintain schools. The minutes of the Charleston School Board tell a pathetic story. As the shells from the hostile batteries penetrated farther and farther into the city, one school after another was rendered unsafe for occupancy. The building was abandoned but the children were housed temporarily in sections more remote from the siege guns, and the, public school system, founded by C. GL Memminger, then a member of the cabinet of President Davis, continued its beneficient work.
Development Since the War.
The work of rebuilding has necessarily been slow. What has been done may be realized by comparing the present status with the condition described by the United States Commissioner of Education in his first report, published in 1870. He says:
"Virginia is just putting a free school system into operation, but encountering great difficulties in the lack of funds, the want of cor- rect information of what a free school system is and in the absence of school houses and qualified school officers and teachers.
"North Carolina has been struggling for about two years to put a system of free schools into operation. * * Many reasons
combine to render the friends of education more fearful of defeat than hopeful of success.
"The friends of education in Tennessee, after seeing the school system put into operation and nearly 200,000 children enrolled, saw their work overthrown by reactionary sentiments, save in the cities of
ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 289
Nashville and Memphis, and the provisions reinacted in accordance with which the pauper schools of the days of slavery were conducted.
"Arkansas, encountering the evils common to the regions where slavery has been abolished, has secured a greater success than the majority of the Southern states.
"South Carolina, among the states having the largest percentage of illiteracy, is confident of final success in establishing free common schools.
"Florida, although under a most zealous and competent superin- tendent, now deceased, has hesitated in giving the greatest efficiency to the system sought to be established, and yet presents reasons for anticipating the general prevalence of free schools.
"Alabama, after the friends of educators had put forth most strenuous efforts, and secured the general opening of the schools, with hopes of permanent success in the establishment of free and universal education, now debates the question of advancing or retreating.
"Mississippi, though commencing late, is progressing steadily and efficiently in the establishment of a system of free schools, notwith- standing the great and bitter opposition, appointed county superin- tendents, collecting the school tax, and building school houses.
' ' The school code of Louisiana, containing some features well adopted to efficiency, and administered with great energy, has encoun- tered an opposition so persistent and fierce that its success outside the city of New Orleans has been most unsatisfactory to its friends.
"Georgia has just passed a school law and appointed a state com- missioner, but must wait a year for funds with which to put the system into full operation.
' ' In Texas, no school legislation has, so far, succeeded, and no public officers are at work for the organization of schools, her entire people being left to grow up in ignorance, save here and there a private enterprise throws a ray of light upon the general darkness."
The poverty of the South resulting from the war, and the fact that the government was in the hands of the ' * carpet-bagger ' ' and the f reedmen, are a suf- ficient explanation of the condition described. Had the movement which began in 1850 not been inter- rupted and crushed by war and reconstruction, 1870 would have seen the common school system firmly established in the South. The abolition of slavery, however, destroyed much of the class distinction which has characterized the Old South and brought about a condition which since 1876 has hastened the progress of the common school. A roll call of the itates and a description of present conditions, as it is given annually before the Conference for Educa-
Vol. 10— 19
290 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
tion in the South, will reveal the unanimity with which we have adopted the system and the liberality with which we are supporting it.
In 1870, 32 per cent, of the children in the South- ern states between five and eighteen years of age were in the public schools. In 1880 this had risen to 48 per cent., in 1890 to 60 per cent, and in 1900 to 66 per cent.
In the North Atlantic states the percentage had dropped from 78 in 1870 to 71 in 1900. As the wealth of the South has gradually recovered from the rav- ages of war the expenditure for public schools per capita of total population has increased. This was $0.68 in 1870, $0.62 in 1880, $0.98 in 1890, $1.16 in 1900, and $1.45 in 1906. The per capita is still low but is increasing steadily.
In proportion to its wealth, the South now com- pares very favorably with other sections of the country in its expenditures for public schools. The average for the United States in 1904 was 25 cents on every $100; the average of the South was 20 cents.
The average length of the school term in the South has increased from 94 days in 1870 to 115 days in 1906. The average for the United States is 150 days. The status of the elementary school in the South still leaves much to be desired, but every year marks a substantial advance. No man would now dare to seek a public office in the South on a platform of hostility to the public school or of retrenchment in its support; every Southern state now has an efficient, well-organized department of education, every state has its Normal School or schools for the training of its teachers, every city or town of any importance has its graded school open nine months in the year with efficient teachers and skilled super-
ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 291
vision, and every state in the South is now pushing into the remotest country districts the propaganda for better schools, better school houses, better sup- port and better teachers. Not a legislature meets in any Southern state but makes some decided for- ward step in school legislation. Triumphant hope- fulness on the eve of glorious victory is now the atti- tude of friends of popular education in the South.
It is not necessary to say that our educational problem is complicated by the presence of two races whose new relations to each other have been slow in establishing themselves since the sudden destruc- tion of the old regime. No page in our educational history reflects greater credit on the South than that which tells the story of our work in the educa- tion of the colored race. Since 1870 the South from her poverty has contributed not less than $200,- 000,000 to the education of the negro, and this has been done in spite of the political blunders of ''reconstruction" and the misguided zeal of later days which have tended to alienate the negro and his best friends.
The South is prosecuting this work for the negro with even greater willingness and efficiency since the attitude of other sections has gradually changed from a critical superiority to a sympathetic help- fulness.
No sketch of Southern education should close without an expression of gratitude to our friends in the days of darkness — George Peabody and the Pea- body Board of Trust. No other $3,000,000 ever accu- mulated on the earth has done so beneficent a work as has this fund, administered by this Board under the direction of Dr. Barnas Sears and Dr. J. L. M. Curry. It was an immeasurable stimulus in the development of our present city and state school
292 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
systems and in the training of our teachers. The George Peabody College for Teachers at Nashville, endowed by the Board as an educational West Point for the whole South, will be the fitting consummation of its beneficent work and the enduring monument to our greatest benefactor.
I can close this paper in no better way than by quoting the educational creed of the South, adopted on a recent 4th of July by the two thousand teachers composing that great educational camp-meeting, the Summer School of the South at Knoxville :
"We, teachers and citizens, students of the Summer School of the South, representatives of every Southern state and of every phase of educational service, assembled to celebrate this day of our national independence, desire to voice our sense of gratitude for the heritage handed down to us by our fathers and to express our sense of respon- sibility to the generations thtit are to come. As an expression of our patriotism and of a courage born of the consciousness of power to enlarge the freedom which we this day celebrate, we unite in the following declaration :
"I. That the genius of democracy implies opportunity made universal; opportunity given to every man to live according to his capacity the life of highest meaning to himself and of largest service to humanity.
"II. That the mutual relations of individual and collective inter- ests in our society are such that the ignorance of one individual or of one class becomes a menace to the security of the social whole and a handicap to its every member, while the intelligence and efficiency of each individual contributes to the wealth and opportunity of all; that every child born in the state thus becomes at once a social asset and a social charge; that the education of all the children of all the people into the highest degree of efficiency is the chief problem and the supreme duty of our democracy.
"III. That since more than 80 per cent, of our people live in the country and for generations to come must continue to live under rural conditions, we express our gratitude for the steady progress of the rural school and pledge our continued cooperation with the forces now at work for the increase of local taxation for schools, the lengthening of terms, and the improvement of houses and equipment.
"IV. That we commend the policy which seeks to consolidate and centralize schools and to make these consolidated schools vital centres of community life.
"V. That the rural library is an essential instrumentality in overcoming the isolation of rural life and in bringing the child and the community into relation with the larger life of humanity.
"VI. That, to the traditional curriculum which educated the child away from his environment and prepared him for leisure or for the
ELEMENTAKY EDUCATION. 293
learned professions, should be added the sciences and the modes of expression which will give him mastery over nature and over him- self— this to the end that he may honor labor and find joy in pro- ductive activity; that his surroundings may be made his instruments, and that the plot of earth upon which he lives may become at once the fit enyironment and the fit expression of a worthy life.
"VII. That the consolidated school with its reconstructed curri- culum and improved machinery is after all so much dead material which must be quickened by the personality of the teacher. Our progress in material facilities emphasizes the call for educated teachers, and we appeal to our states to meet this need by the more adequate provision and equipment of high schools and normal schools.
"VIII. That the fine educational enthusiasm, the passion for service now so manifest throughout the South calls for an adequately trained leadership to direct it into the channels of constructive activity. The greatest educational need of the hour is educational statesmanship and directive capacity in the office of superintendent, supervisor and principal. To supply this need we appeal to our states for a more generous support of our state universities now entering upon a career of larger life and greater efficiency.
"IX. That for the adequate training of leadership the South is in need of an educational West Point. In the Summer School of the South we find a suggestion of the possibilities of a central teachers ' college permanently endowed and adequately equipped. Such an institution would supplement and reinforce local endeavor at every point and would perform a function which no state institution can undertake. ' '
In this creed is a New South of conserved and developed resources, of fertile fields and busy work- shops, where personal morality and civic righteous- ness prevail, and the races dwell together in the unity of mutual service; a South in which achieve- ment and leisure bring to perfect flower the litera- ture and art which are potent in her history and traditions, and whose statesmanship once more takes its proper place in the councils of a reunited Ee- public.
WILLIAM KNOX TATE,
Principal Memminger Normal School, Charleston, S. C.
294 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER IX.
NORMAL EDUCATION IN THE "SOUTH, b
'HOMAS JEFFERSON introduced into the General Assembly of the State of Virginia as early as 1779 a bill looking to the foundation of common schools "for the free training of all free children, male and female, for three years, in reading, writing and arithmetic." This proposed admission of girls preceded by ten years the admis- sion of girls to the common schools of Boston, thus placing the South, represented by Jefferson, as the pioneer in this field of female education.
Far-seeing and patriotic citizens of South Carolina from its earliest settlement pointed out the necessity for public schools and advocated their establishment. "An act for the founding and erecting of a free school for the use of the inhabitants of South Caro- lina" was passed by the South Carolina Assembly April 8, 1710.
But the South as a whole was slow to follow these and other great examples. The peculiar social con- ditions at the South and the prejudice against the education of the masses inherited from England by the ruling classes prevented the establishment of any adequate system of free public education for the children before the war. Being slow to make proper provision for schools for the children the South was, of course, still more backward in realizing the im- portance of training schools for teachers, and no school of that kind was established in the Southern states until long after they were in successful opera- tion in other parts of the United States. There were leaders in the South who clearly saw the necessity
NORMAL EDUCATION. 295
for the professional training of teachers about the same time it was seen by leaders at the North and long before such professional training was provided, and who attempted to arouse the public to this vital need but without avail. Dr. Philip Lindsley in an address delivered when inaugurated president of Cumberland College, Nashville, Tenn., in 1825, advo- cated a " teachers' seminary urging that a teacher needs training for his work as imperatively as the lawyer and physician." He went before the legis- lature of Tennessee the next year and pleaded for seminaries for teachers but without success.
There seems to be some question as to who in America first suggested that teachers should be spe- cially trained for their work. An article in the June number of the Massachusetts Magazine of the year 1789 advocating special teacher-training is accepted as the first suggestion of this kind in that part of the country, but forty years before this article ap- peared "a school was established in Philadelphia, Pa., one of whose objects was the education of young men to be teachers." The first normal school was established in this country in 1839 at Lexington, Mass.
The establishment, form and development of nor- mal schools in the United States was strongly in- fluenced by the normal schools of Europe, especially of Prussia.
The normal school idea was old in Europe when it first appeared in this country. It was originated by Mulcaster in England in 1561, but did not attract much attention in the educational world, or make much impression until the establishment of ''Teach- ers' Seminaries" in Prussia during the years 1735 to 1819.
The first normal school in the South was estab-
296 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
lished at Charleston, S. C., by act of the General Assembly passed Dec. 21, 1857, and was called the "Girls' High and Normal School." Its work was interrupted by the war, but it was reorganized after the war as a local institution and is now accomplish- ing excellent results, mainly for the city of Charles- ton, which supports it. This school receives no ap- propriation from the state.
The state of Alabama established one normal school for the training of white male and female teachers in 1872, and one for colored students in 1874. This normal school for colored students was the first school supported by a Southern state for the higher education of the negro.
The Peabody Normal College at Nashville, Tenn., named for the great philanthropist, George Peabody, who gave in 1867 to Southern education $3,000,000, the greatest sum ever given by one man up to that time for the education of the whole people, was established in 1875 at the suggestion of the Trus- tees of the Peabody Fund in carrying out their policy of managing the trust committed to them for "the general and permanent improvement of education in the South." After a careful survey of the whole field and a consideration of all the facts the Peabody Board were convinced that the greatest need of the South was a supply of trained teachers and they authorized their agent, Dr. Barnas Sears, to establish and foster normal schools. Mainly through the efforts of Dr. Sears and of Dr. J. L. M. Curry, who was elected General Agent of the Peabody Board in 1881 to succeed Dr. Sears, and on account of the demonstration given by the Peabody Normal College of the value of teacher-training, the different Southern states were led to establish nor- mal schools, until now every state in the South sup-
NORMAL EDUCATION. 297
ports in whole or in part one or more schools for the training of teachers.
Some of these schools besides the Peabody Normal College were established as the direct result of finan- cial aid given by the Peabody Board, notably the Winthrop Normal and Industrial College of South Carolina, and the same Houston Normal School of Texas. The influence and help of the Peabody Board in building up and shaping the educational systems of the South cannot be over-estimated noc. too highly commended. Dr. Curry makes the statement that "at the origin of the Peabody Fund not a single Southern state within the field of its operations had a system of free public schools and only in a few cities were any such schools to be found. No state organization existed through which this fund could reach the people."
What has been accomplished for education in the South since the war cannot be properly appreciated without a knowledge of the conditions and difficulties existing there at that time. The South was left prostrated financially and industrially after the war. The property values had decreased by 1870 as a result of the war and reconstruction to the extent of $2,000,000,000.
The cost of the war alone to the South was one- tenth of her male population and three billions of property. Reconstruction left upon the South in its impoverished condition a crushing bonded debt of over $300,000,000.
Under such a staggering load as this and with the old system of society overturned and new and un- tried problems to face, the Southern people bravely set to work to rebuild their fortunes and institutions.
Just as France after the Eevolution, and Germany after Jena turned to education for the reconstruc-
298 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
tion and regeneration of the state, so tlie South, after the war, turned to universal education as the chief factor in the rebuilding of the country and the recovery of its lost prestige.
A comparatively few noble souls lead in this move- ment, having to contend with not only a lack of means to build and maintain schools but also much inherited prejudice against the free education of all the people.
The advancement made in education in the South since the war, considering all the difficulties met and overcome, is marvellous. Just after the war not one of the Southern states had a normal school for either race. Now every Southern state has one or more such schools and has "state-established, state-con- trolled, state-supported schools for both races, with- out any legal discrimination as to benefits con- ferred. ' '
There are now, according to the Eeport of the United States Commissioner of Education for 1907, thirty-eight public normal schools in the Southern States distributed as follows: Alabama, six; Arkansas, two; Florida, one; Georgia, four; Ken- tucky, four ; Louisiana, two ; Mississippi, two ; North Carolina, six ; Oklahoma, four ; South Carolina, two ; Tennessee, one; Texas, three; Virginia, three.
Of this number eleven are for negroes. There are also some private normal schools in these states, but I do not include these schools in this article because their work is small compared with that of the state institutions and because it is becoming smaller year by year on account of the growth of the state schools which are occupying the field more and more thor- oughly each year.
Exception must be made to this statement in the case of some of the private normal schools for
NOEMAL EDUCATION. 299
negroes in the South which receive substantial finan- cial assistance from Northern philanthropists and are better equipped and better supported, for this reason, than the public normal schools for negroes. The most notable example of this kind of school for negroes is the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Insti- tute of Alabama. The Hampton Normal and Agri- cultural Institute is partly supported by public funds and for that reason is included among the pub- lic normal schools.
From the same report of the United States Com- missioner of Education we find that the normal schools of these states report 865 teachers for 15,867 students, of which numbers 379 of the teachers and 4,436 of the students are negroes.
The same report shows that so far as the normal schools have reported, the appropriations from pub- lic funds for the support of the normal schools in these states amounted to $546,192 for the year 1906-07, $118,518 of this amount being for negro schools, and the value of buildings and grounds in- cluding furniture and equipment was $4,567,245, of which amount $1,661,945 represented the value of grounds, buildings, furniture and equipment for the negro schools.
The history of the development and struggles of the normal schools of the South reads very much like that of the normal schools of the North. They have had their periods of trial, depression, stress and con- flict and have come out of all victorious and are now firmly entrenched in the hearts of the people.
The Southern normal schools, like those of the other sections of the country, are organized to pre- pare teachers for the public schools and to meet the needs, conditions, and requirements existing in the states in which they are located. The normal school
300 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
for whites differs from the normal school for negroes as the conditions obtaining among the two races dif- fer, and both differ from the Northern normal schools as conditions at the South differ from those at the North. Public schools at the South have not been in existence as long as at the North, and hence, public school standards are not yet as high at the South, although they are now being made higher very rapidly. Again the South is more generally agricultural than the North, and more sparsely set- tled, and the people are not so crowded together in great centers of population but live more generally in homes, either their own or rented.
The people of the South, forced by the impoverish- ment and devastation of the war to develop the nat- ural resources of the country, have awakened to the necessity of industrial training. Her fertile fields, rich deposits of coal and ore, great forests, and mag- nificent water power are yet only partially developed and utilized, and they can be properly developed and utilized only with skilled, industrially trained labor.
For these reasons the Southern normal school has had to provide more academic work than is usually provided for in a normal school at the North and more work in domestic science and arts, manual training and elementary agriculture.
There is a strong movement to have the public schools of the South more closely related to the homes of the people and to their needs, and teachers nmst be prepared to teach such schools. Hence, there has arisen in the South a somewhat new type of normal school, represented by the state normal and industrial colleges of South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia, in which are taught, besides the ordinary branches of a regular normal school, do- mestic science, domestic arts, elementary agricul-
NORMAL EDUCATION. 301
ture, dairying, library methods, and commercial studies.
Apart from the necessity for subject matter in the course of study of the Southern normal school on account of the lack of preparation in scholarship of the entering students for college work it is the pre- vailing opinion at the South that a normal school should fit its students academically as well as pro- fessionally for the vocation of teaching as is done in the majority of the normal schools in the United States.
The Southern normal schools offer a variety of courses of study to meet the needs of their students. The usual course extends over four years. This course at the Winthrop Normal and Industrial Col- lege of South Carolina comprises mathematics, Eng- lish, history, Latin, French or German, reading, physiology and hygiene, drawing, sewing, cooking, zoology and botany, sight singing, manual training, physics, chemistry, phychology, pedagogy, geology, child study, practice in the training school, library methods, physical training, and elementary agricul- ture. The degree of A.B. is awarded upon the com- pletion of this course.
There are special courses for the completion of which students receive certificates. Instruction in vocal and instrumental music is provided for at most of the normal schools of the South. Students pay a tuition fee for music.
The English scholarship plan has taken root in some of the Southern states. The Peabody College gave a number of scholarships for years.
The state of South Carolina maintains 124 scholar- ships in its State normal school at an annual charge to the state of $12,400.
In most, if not all, of the Southern states the
302 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
diploma of the State Normal College is equivalent to a life license to teach in the public schools of the state.
All of the normal schools without exception have schools of children for observation and practice com- prising the grades from the kindergarten to the ninth and sometimes higher.
The social and religious life of the students in Southern normal schools is made much of and a fine college spirit usually exists among the students.
The management of the internal affairs of a nor- mal school in the South is placed in the hands of the faculty and president, and the executive is given large powers and is held largely responsible for re- sults. A board of trustees elected by the state leg- islature or appointed by the governor is in general control and appoints the president and teachers.
The support of these schools is usually provided by the state by direct appropriations.
The South has made great strides in education in recent years but is destined to make still greater progress in the future on account of the more gen- eral realization of the people of the value of educa- tion and because of the prosperity of the country resulting from the remarkable industrial develop- ment throughout the Southern states.
Dr. Wickliffe Rose makes the statement that within twenty years, from 1880 to 1900, the South increased its wages paid to factory hands from $76,000,000 to $350,000,000; its production of pig iron from 397,000 tons to 2,500,000 tons ; its output of coal from 6,000,000 tons in 1880 to 50,000,000 tons in 1900. During the same period the total output of her manufactured products was increased from $338,791,898 in 1880 to $1,173,422,565 in 1900. The development of textile industries within the same
MEDICAL EDUCATION. 303
period was phenomenal. The number of spindles was increased from 667,000 in 1880 to 5,000,000 in 1899. In the one year, 1899, there were erected in the South 365 new cotton mills as against seventeen in the New England states.
A people who can accomplish such results as these in industrial life in the face of so many difficulties can accomplish equally great results in educational matters, especially with the means in hand furnished by these industrial activities.
In the preparation of this article I have consulted papers and re- ports by Dr. E. O. Lyte, Dr. M. A. Newell, Dr. J. P. Gordy, Dr. J. L. M. Curry, Dr. Wiekliffe Rose, Dr. A. D. Mayo, Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, the Committee on Normal Schools of the National Education Association, and the United States Bureau of Education, and I wish here to make grateful acknowledgment of the help received from them all.
D. B. JOHNSON,
President of Winihrop Normal and Industrial College.
CHAPTER X. MEDICAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH.
Medical Practice in the Colonies.
HE earliest history of the settlers in the South would involve, of course, nothing of the teaching of medicine and not much of the practice. There were few physicians and their services were much in demand over a widely extended territory which they were able to cover inadequately at best and could not have cov- ered at all but for the devotion and hardihood which seemed generically attached to the character of the frontier doctor and for the rugged constitutions of the people and the wholesome nature of their lives.
304 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
In most communities there was a well received tenet that the older women were skilled in the treatment of disease, and where one of these was a close observer and had stowed away the results of long experience, she was likely to meet with success which would extend her reputation until she became the acknowledged medical authority for miles around. To the success of such practice there was, again, the element of the character of the people, but quite as important was the fact that the materia medica rarely contained anything of a hurtful sort. It would be inadequate to regard the practice of these per- sons as confined to skill in the treatment of wounds —romantically considered part of the accomplish- ments of the heroines of the Middle Ages — or to restrict it to the cases of labor which form so large a part of such practice in remote districts at pres- ent. These earlier workers placed no narrow limits to their fields and, while they rarely invaded the demain of surgery, there was little in the bounds of medicine which they did not attempt and, to their credit be it said, no little which they accomplished. There were, however, at every period of the colo- nial history men who had received professional training in the schools of Europe and this was par- ticularly true of those portions of the South where Spanish or French influence began to predominate. And as the years passed, and the increasing num- bers and wealth of the Southern people began to voice the need of a thoroughly equipped native med- ical service, many of the brightest young men in the South heard the call and stepped forth to seek in the distant schools the best equipment possible at that clay. A little later the Revolutionary War gave a great impulse to the cause of medical and surgical education and laid the foundation for both
MEDICAL EDUCATION. 305
a popular and professional demand for a properly qualified body of practitioners.
Medical Colleges in the South.
Thus, even before the country had recuperated from a long and devastating war, medical colleges began to spring up in various parts of the South. In 1804, at Baltimore, the Maryland College of Medi- cine was chartered ; in 1817 the department of medi- cine of Transylvania University was organized at Lexington, Ky. ; in 1819. the medical department of the University of Virginia was chartered and organ- ized for work seven years later ; in 1823 the Medical College of South Carolina was begun; and so on, until there are now in the Southern states, including West Virginia, fifty-six medical schools with an aggregate annual enrollment of over 8,600 students and about 1,800 annual graduates.
Birmingham Medical College, Birmingham.
Medical Department of the University of Alabama, Mobile.
ARKANSAS.
University of Arkansas Medical Department. Little Rock. College of Physicians and Surgeons, Little Rock.
GEORGIA.
Atlanta College of Physicians and Surgeons, Atlanta. Atlanta School of Medicine, Atlanta.
Georgia College of Eclectic Medicine and Surgery, Atlanta. Medical College of Georgia, Augusta.
KENTUCKY.
Kentucky School of Medicine, Louisville. Louisville and Hospital Medical College, Louisville. University of Louisville Medical Department, Louisville. Southwestern Homeopathic College. Louisville. Louisville National Medical College, Colored, Louisville.
LOUISIANA.
Medical Department of The Tulane University of Louisiana, New Orleans. Flint Medical College of New Orleans University, Colored, New Orleans.
MARYLAND.
Johns-Hopkins Medical School, Baltimore.
College of Physicians and Surgeons, Baltimore.
University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore.
Baltimore Medical College, Baltimore.
Woman's Medical College of Baltimore, Baltimore.
Maryland Medical College, Baltimore.
Atlantic Medical College, Baltimore.
Vol. 10—20
306 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
MISSISSIPPI.
Mississippi Medical College, Meridian.
University of Mississippi Medical Department, Oxford and Vicksburg.
MISSOURI.
Department of Medicine of the University of Missouri, Columbia. University Medical College of Kansas City, Kansas City. Kansas City Habnemann Medical College, Kansas City. The Ensworth Medical College, St. Joseph. Washington University Medical Department, St. Louis. St. Louis University School of Medicine, St. Louis. St. Louis College of Physicians and Surgeons, St. Louis. Barnes Medical College, St. Louis. Homeopathic Medical College of Missouri, St. Louis. American Medical College, Eclectic, St. Louis.
Hippocratean College of Medicine, St. Louis. (The Missouri State Board of Health reports that this college is not in good standing.)
NORTH CAROLINA.
(University of North Carolina Medical Department, Chapel Hill and Raleigh. North Carolina Medical College, Charlotte. Leonard School of Medicine, Colored, Raleigh. Wake Forest School of Medicine, Wake Forest.
SOUTH CAROLINA.
The Medical College of the State of South Carolina, Charleston.
TENNESSEE.
Chattanooga Medical College, Chattanooga.
Tennessee Medical College, Knoxville.
Knoxville Medical College, Colored, Knoxville.
College of Physicians and Surgeons, Memphis.
Memphis Hospital Medical College, Memphis.
Medical College of the University of West Tennessee, Colored, Memphis.
Vanderbilt University, Medical Department, Nashville.
University of Nashville, Medical Department, Nashville.
University of Tennessee, Medical Department, Nashville.
Meharry Medical College, Colored, Nashville.
Medical Department of the University of the South, Sewanee.
TEXAS.
Baylor University College of Medicine, Dallas.
Southwestern University Medical College, Dallas.
College of Physicians and Surgeons, Dallas.
Medical Department of Fort Worth University, Fort Worth.
University of Texas, Department of Medicine, Galveston.
VIRGINIA.
University of Virginia, Department of Medicine, Charlottesvilie. Medical College of Virginia, Richmond. University College of Medicine, Richmond.
WEST VIRGINIA.
West Virginia Univeristy College of Medicine, Morgantown.
Equipment and Curriculum of the Medical Colleges.
As to the work done by these schools and the bearing of that work upon the progress of medical education in the South, while results have not been so brilliant as the most enthusiastic might demand, they are sufficiently marked to inspire reasonable hope for the future. The inception and gradual enlargement of the work have followed much the same lines as those prevailing in other regions of
MEDICAL EDUCATION. 307
the country. Most of the earlier schools gave courses of only two years and the work of the second year was generally a repetition of the first. The University of Virginia was for a long time the only one to offer a graded course. None of them imposed any educational requirements for admission except, in some cases, that a student should have spent three years or more in the office of some reputable practicing physician. The curricula were not as a rule extensive and but little provision was made for dissection or clinical work.
Such were the conditions which prevailed for years among the Southern schools. But the mar- velous professional awakening of the last quarter of a century — the tremendous strides of knowledge which are bringing the practice of medicine and sur- gery within the domain of the exact sciences — at once brought to light the inadequacy of these schools in equipment and in curriculum proper to the best modern medical teaching. The necessity of improve- ment was everywhere conceded and this improve- ment has been carried on with increasing vigor and success. Within the past two decades the length of the course in almost all of the Southern schools has been increased, first to three, and then to four years ; entrance requirements have been established and extended, until now virtually all these schools require a high school course, or at least two years of such a course, including some knowledge of Latin and science. The lines of work have been broadened by the addition of many subjects and most particu- lar improvement has been made in the laboratory and in clinical work. Some of the schools have hos- pitals of their own as a part of their equipment. Others have established special relations with inde- pendent hospitals and, so obtained the requisite
308 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
clinical advantages. The Association of American Medical Colleges, to which many Southern schools belong, and the Southern Medical College Associa- tion have contributed greatly to the improvement in the general standard of work as well in the asso- ciated institutions, as in the outside schools, which have necessarily felt their influence.
State Aid to Medical Colleges.
The various State governments have aided the work of improvement in some few cases by appro- priating money to aid in supporting medical schools or by supporting, at the public expense, the medical department of the State university. But so far the states have done their chief work by prescribing higher standards of medical qualification for license to practice within the state. The states have not yet attained the dignity nor the equity of uniformity and reciprocal recognition of such standards. It may be that by some belated working of the old leaven of state sovereignty it would be particularly difficult to secure interstate harmony on this matter in the South.
No matter whence it arises, the tendency against uniformity in this subject is no fortunate one and might be reversed with considerable gain.
Bank of Colleges.
Judging of cause by effect, it might throw light on the general question of the efficiency of the med- ical colleges of the South to cite the list of such schools ranked in the first position by the organ of the American Medical Association. The investiga- tion covers the schools of the entire country and for the success of their students in passing the various state examinations rank in the first place is given to the Birmingham Medical College, the medical
MEDICAL EDUCATION. 309
departments of the universities of Missouri, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia, the Johns Hopkins Medical School, the medical department of Tulane University and the Woman's Medical College of Baltimore.
Accomplishments of Southern Medical Colleges.
In many respects the same characteristics must have marked the evolution of the Southern medical colleges as have marked that of such schools else- where. If in genius, growth or present status they may be differentiated, the fact necessarily arises out of the physical, economic and social conditions of their habitat. From the very beginning the nat- ural tastes and inherent instincts of the Southern people rendered them averse to aggregation and city building, and served to disperse them into widely separated homes and into agricultural employment and rural life. Up to the end of the War of Secession there were in the entire South few cities large enough to sustain a number of phy- sicians sufficient for the faculty needs of a medical school and, even now, there are few colleges in a position to "call" desirable men from outside. The necessity of support for a large slave population — which could be realized only by the result of the roughest and most primitive labor — was always a great incentive to plantation life and it is little wonder that, when interest and taste and dignity and comfort all combine to paint the joys of such a life, it should become overwhelmingly alluring an that the ranks of the medical profession were no to any considerable extent filled in the older days by recruits from the dominant social stratum to which law and politics presented a far more attractive and congenial life.
310 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
A large proportion of the schools referred to have done, and are still doing, acceptable work and from year to year are sending out men excellently equipped for their beneficent calling, and many of these have attained more than local reputation and honor. It would, of course, be impossible to com- press within the narrow limits assigned to this sketch any sort of detailed history either of the institutions themselves or of their alumni.
In estimating the Southern schools of medicine, and their value to the nation, mainly, of course, by the accomplishment of the men whom they have sent out, one is disposed to marvel that they have done so much with the means at their command and, bear- ing the conditions constantly in mind, to adjudge them a most honorable place among the great agen- cies to which the real advancement of America is due. But all the sentiments of the investigator must be tinged with regret for the loss of the higher accomplishment which has been denied by poverty. By the consent of every thinking man it is agreed that no worthy sort of advanced teaching may be done at the cost of university fees. The interest on splendid endowments and liberal incidental gifts are needed to supplement the teaching income of all the great colleges; and medical schools, from the extraordinary cost of their upkeep, are particularly subject to this rule. Had the medical colleges of the South enjoyed — as pro bono publico they cer- tainly should have had — an income commensurate with their needs and guaranteed by the states of their location, they would by now have proved incal- culable boons to humanity and would have attained that place of usefulness, the ideal, to which liberal and wisely directed state appropriation may bring them still.
MEDICAL EDUCATION. 311
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Adolphus, J. : Medical Teaching and Medical Colleges in the United States (Medical Times, Vol. XXXIII, p. 348, Chicago, 1900); Baker, H. B. : Evolution of the American Medical College (Bulletin of the American Academy of Medicine, Vol. V, p. 489, 1901); Bevan, A. D. : Medical Education in the United States (American Medical Association Journal, Vol. LI, p. 566, 1908) ; Bil- lings, F. : Medical Education in the United States (Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. XL, p. 1271, 1903; also in Bos- ton Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. CXLVIII, p. 487; also in New York Medical Journal, Vol. LXXVI, p. 817, 1903; Dabney, S. G.: Medical Education in the United States (Louisville Monthly Journal of Medicine and Surgery, Vol. XI, p. 378, 1904) ; Davis, N. S. : . Con- tributions to the History of Medical Education, 1776-1876; Medical Schools and Medical Teachers Sixty Tears Ago (Medical Standard, Vol. XXV, p. 463, 1902), and Requirements for Admission to Medical Schools (New York Medical Journal, Vol. LXXVIII, p. 205, 1903; Dodson, J. M. : The Medical Department of Tulane University (Med- ical News, Vol. LXXX, p. 481, 1902); Elkin, W. S.: A Plea for Higher Medical Education in the South (Atlanta Medical and Surgi- cal Journal, New Ser., Vol. XI, p. 531, 1894-95) ; F. G. B.: List and Standing of Medical Schools in the United States (Medical Notes and Queries, Vol. Ill, p. 163, Lancaster, Pa., 1907) ; Grandy, L. B.: The Present Demand for Better Medical Education in the South (Atlanta Medical and Surgical Journal, New Ser., Vol. IX, p. 513, 1893; Hardwecke, H. J. : Medical Education and Practice, 1880, Illinois State Board of Health (Report on Medical Education, etc., 1891) ; Jordon, D. S. : The American Medical College and Its Requirements (Bulletin American Academy of Medicine, Vol. for 1908, p. 29, East on, Pa.), and Medical Schools of the United States (Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. XLIX, p. 576, 1907) ; Osier, Win. : The Functions of a State Faculty (Transactions of the Medi- cal Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland, 1897); Paine, J. F. Y.: His- tory of Medical Teaching in Texas (Texas Medical Journal, Vol. XXII, p. 173, 1906) and Status of Medical Education in the United States (Transactions of the Texas Medical Associations for 1892, p. 235) ; Pearce, S. : Comparison of Medical Examinations in Dif- ferent States (Philadelphia Medical Journal, Vol. V, p. 546, 1900) ; Peter, E. : History of the Medical Department of Transylvania Uni- versity, 1905 (Filson Club Publications, No. 20); Puschmann, T. : History of Medical Education from the Most Remote to the Most Re- cent Times (1891) ; Warren, J. C. : Medical Education in the United States (Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol CXXIX, p. 285, 1893; also in Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. XXI, p. 375, 1893); Webster, G. W.: Report on the Curricula of American Medical Colleges (Neiv York Medical Journal, Vol. LXXX, pp. 145, 205, 1904) ; Whitehead, E. H. : Evolution of Medical Edu- cation in America (Bulletin of the University of Virginia, Vol. VII, p. 1, 1907).
GEORGE BEN JOHNSTON,
Formerly President Richmond Academy of Medicine and Surgery, President of American Surgical Association, 1904.
313 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER XI.
THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH. *
'HEOLOGICAL education in the South originally consisted of courses of study pursued by individuals from among the young men of the churches preparing for the ministry, under the direction of older men in the ministry. The second stage was the establish- ment of colleges or secondary schools for the edu- cation of the ministry. The majority of denomina- tional colleges in the South were founded chiefly to educate ministers of the Gospel. In the earlier days industrial features were quite common in these denominational colleges. The third stage was the coming of the theological seminary.
Theological Schools.
The pioneers in the establishment of theological seminaries were the Presbyterians. The oldest dis- tinctively theological seminary in the South among the numerous Protestant denominations is Union Theological Seminary of Richmond, Va., which was founded in 1812. Its present faculty num- bers seven and its student body seventy-five. Another Presbyterian school is the Columbia Theo- logical Seminary at Columbia, S. C., which was founded in 1828. Its faculty numbers four and its student body twenty-seven. The Presbyterians of the South have, including institutions for the educa- tion of colored students, a total of seven schools for theological training. There is a school for colored students at Tuscaloosa, Ala., and another supported by northern Presbyterians at Charlotte, N. C.
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Besides the schools named in the above list there is a theological department in the Southwestern Pres- byterian University at Clarksville, Tenn., and a Presbyterian Theological Seminary at Austin, Tex. The last organized and one of the most important of the Presbyterian schools is the Presbyterian Sem- inary of Kentucky, founded in 1901. This school was consolidated out of the Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, founded in 1890, and the Danville Pres- byterian Seminary, founded in 1853, and is jointly maintained by the Northern and Southern churches.
The Cumberland Presbyterians maintain a theo- logical seminary at Lebanon, Tenn. This school was founded in 1852. It has six in its faculty and in the session of 1907-08 its student body numbered thirty-nine.
The Evangelical Lutherans have two theological schools in the South. Concordia Seminary, in St. Louis, Mo., with 185 students and seven teachers, was founded in 1839.
One of the earliest of the Southern schools is the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Mount Pleasant, S. C. It was founded in 1830; its faculty numbers five and its student body sixteen. Southern Bap- tists were among the early arrivals in the field of theological education. They founded a school known as the Western Baptist Theological Institute at Covington, Ky., in the year 1839. This school was jointly supported by Northern and Southern Baptists, but owing to the controversies growing out of the slavery question its career was brief. When its doors were closed its remaining assets were turned over to Georgetown College at George- town, Ky.
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary was founded in 1859 at Greenville, S. C., and was
314 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
removed to Louisville in 1878. This school from the date of its origin has been notable for several features which mark it as a pioneer in theological education. It was the first theological seminary to adopt the elective system in its courses of study. It has been notable from the outset for its thorough courses in the English Bible. These are taught > by the professors of Hebrew and Greek and are given a most conspicuous place in the seminary work. All other theological schools which have English Bible courses, have adopted them in recent years. The school at Louisville has had them from the begin- ning. A third characteristic of this school is that it has from its inception welcomed students of dif- ferent grades of preparation. This arrangement has worked well, although an increasing ratio of the men enrolled has been college men. At present between 85 and 90 per cent, of the total enrollment is of college men. This school is also remarkable for the large student body, which numbers usually between 275 and 300 men. In the session of 1906-07 the enrollment was 294. The faculty numbers nine. Southern Baptists have pursued the policy of con- centration rather than diffusion in theological edu- cation. Hence the strength and influence of the Louisville school.
The Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary at Waco, Texas, was originally the Bible department of Baylor University. It became a seminary in the complete sense about three years ago and finds that in the great state of Texas, which equals in area that of many other states, there is a wide field of usefulness. Its faculty numbers seven and its stu- dent body varies from 100 to 200 men. Some of these also pursue undergraduate work in Baylor University.
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There is also at present a Baptist theological school maintained in connection with William Jewell College of Liberty, Mo., which enrolls more than a hundred students annually and thus renders effect- ive service to the Baptists of Missouri. The Free- will Baptists maintain an effective theological seminary at Ayden, N. C., and in 1898 it had four teachers and sixty-five pupils.
Among Southern Baptists many of the colleges have Bible courses and a few add theological studies of one kind or another for the benefit of ministerial students. The drift of sentiment among Southern Baptists, however, is in the direction of restricting college work to college studies proper and not to attempt to do the work of the theological seminary. The one exception is in the matter of English Bible. There is a quite general sentiment in favor of Eng- lish Bible courses in the colleges.
The Christian Church, or the Church of Disciples, established the Christian Bible College in Lexing- ton, Ky., in 1865. There are five in the faculty and the student body numbers 165. This school is the leading theological school of the Church of Disciples and exerts a very wide influence among the people of that name, especially in Kentucky and the Middle West. This body also maintains a School of Evan- gelists at Kimberlin Heights, Tenn., with more than 100 students for the ministry. Like nearly all the denominations in the South, the Disciples have numerous colleges with students for the ministry in attendance to a greater or less extent.
Theological education in the Methodist Episcopal Church South has passed through several stages. First came the conference studies for young min- isters prescribed by the General Conference. These courses were for a long time quite meager and inade-
316 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
quate. Later theological branches were introduced into the courses of study at the various colleges. At present the majority of Methodist colleges, and in some cases secondary schools, have limited courses in theology. The wisdom of this plan, however, is being called in question by some. The Biblical department of Vanderbilt University, at Nashville, Tenn., was established in 1875. This is of course the leading centre of theological education for Southern Methodists. It enjoys the distinction of having established in 1902 the most successful corre- spondence course to be found in the South. In 1907 it enrolled nearly a thousand students in the corre- spondence courses.
In both the two great popular denominations of the South, the Baptist and Methodist, the establish- ment and maintenance of theological seminaries have encountered serious opposition. The found- ing of the Biblical department of Vanderbilt Univer- sity was regarded by the Methodists generally in the language of a Methodist writer, as the birth of an "unwelcome child." The movement to raise $300.000 for its endowment, which was endorsed by the General Conference in 1894, has had only very partial success.
Among Southern Baptists also more or less oppo- sition has attended the progress of the school at Louisville. In spite of this, however, the school has succeeded in acquiring about half a million of pro- ductive endowment and three or four hundred thou- sand dollars in plant and real estate. Among the Baptists the opposition is slowly giving way as the masses of the people learn the real value of the work done at their school. Doubtless this is also true in large measure in the Methodist body. Per- haps it ought not to surprise us to find this wide-
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spread prejudice against theological seminaries in these two great denominations when we recall the pertinent facts. Both of them have been notably successful in winning the uneducated masses, as well as the better educated. Both have had as lead- ers in many sections men without even college train- ing, and yet with great native ability and power, whose influence has often been against the idea of a ministry trained in the schools. The inability of the South to extend the public school system suffi- ciently to meet the needs of the people since the war has operated to prevent the spread of intelligence and in some places to leave the people with their prejudices and narrow outlook. Time and education alone will cure this evil.
The Methodist Protestants have two schools for the training of ministers. One is at Westminster, Md., and has six teachers and thirty-three pupils; the other, at Tehuacana, Texas, has nine teachers and eighty pupils.
Theological education in the Protestant Episcopal Church of the South had its formal beginning in the establishment of the Virginia Theological Semi- nary at Alexandria, Va., at the close of the first quarter of the last century. This school has from thirty to fifty students each session, and its endow- ment is sufficient to maintain the work on its present basis. Among its graduates have been some of the most distinguished of the Episcopal clergy, the late Bishop Phillips Brooks of Massachusetts being one of the number. There is also a theological depart- ment connected with the Protestant Episcopal school at Sewanee, Tenn., the University of the South, which has rendered most effective service in the education of the Episcopal clergy of the South. The
318 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
courses of study in these schools are thorough and a high degree of efficiency marks the work done.
The Roman Catholics of the South maintain numerous institutions for the training of the priest- hood in the South. The oldest of these is St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore, Md., which has seventeen teachers and 195 pupils. It was founded in 1791. It is the oldest theological institution in the South. Other institutions of the Eoman Catholics are St. Bernard Abbey, St. Bernard College; a seminary at St. Mary's College, Emmitsburg, Md. ; Redemptorist College, at Ilchester, Md. ; Woodstock College, Woodstock, Md. ; a seminary at Mt. St. Clement's College, De Soto, Mo.; Kenrick Theological Semi- nary, St. Louis, Mo.; Department of Theology, St. Mary's College, Belmont, N. C. No other religious denomination maintains so many schools for train- ing the ministry nor has a total attendance so large in the South as the Roman Catholics.
The limits of this article do not admit of further details as to theological schools. The work done for the negroes by various bodies would make an interesting chapter in itself. This is of recent origin, and is yet in its initial stages in large measure. The Presbyterians, the Methodists, the Disciples, the Episcopalians, the Baptists, and others are striving to do what they may to equip and render efficient the negro ministry. The Southern negro has exhib- ited a decided tendency in recent years to rely upon himself in missionary and theological matters and is attaining thus a much higher degree of efficiency.
Some Characteristics and Results.
We may now consider briefly some characteristics of Southern theological education as seen in the men trained as well as in the methods employed. In the
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statement which follows the aim is to interpret Southern theological education from the point of view of its inward spirit and to understand its pecu- liarities in the light of that spirit.
First, then, Southern theological education has sought to emphasize religion itself, rather than thought about religion. There have been creeds and formularies, of course, and in some bodies these have been too slavishly followed, and the tendency has been too often to worship the definition rather than the God behind the definition. Notwithstand- ing this, however, the accent has in the main been upon the emotional and devotional rather than upon the intellectual, that is, upon the fact side rather than upon the thought side of religion. This has been due in part to temperamental and climatic causes. Some have supposed that the Southern type of mentality is averse to the more severe forms of intellectual effort. This, however, may well be questioned in view of the intellectual achievements of southern countries like Italy and Greece, as well as the South itself.
As a result of the central place accorded to the idea of religion as contrasted with thought about religion has been the remarkable stress upon evan- gelism, or the direct appeal to the sinner in the revival meeting. Perhaps nowhere on earth to-day can be found so large a proportion of the ministry of all denominations who are skillful evangelists as in the South. This evangelistic tendency has led to a variety of results, some good and some evil. Among them may be named the comparative neglect of the didactic or pedagogical element in preaching. This in turn issues in too little emphasis upon the ethical or moral contents of faith; and out of fhis has grown the difficulty of making connection* be-
320 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
tween the pulpit and social and civic life. At best the latter task is difficult, but the difficulty is greatly enhanced when a fundamental attitude is in the way. The problem is not that of forsaking evangelism for the other things but of connecting religion with all its legitimate results.
Another result of the strong evangelistic tendency has been the equally strong doctrinal conservatism. Southern conservatism in doctrinal matters is not to be explained merely on the view that the ministry is inherently averse to new truth. It grows very largely out of the fact that the old truth has worked well. When you conceive religion as a thought pro- cess it is one thing; but when you conceive it as a propaganda it is quite another. In the former case the supreme thing will seem to be individualism, freedom, originality ; in the latter fixed beliefs, tried and tested doctrines, useful and successful creeds. The latter is the pragmatic way of regarding truth, and unconsciously or consciously the Southern min- istry has acted, in the main, upon the pragmatic method. The survival value, therefore, of the creeds, or its practical efficiency like the organ of the animal in the struggle for life, has been the test. To the Southern evangelistic preacher his doctrinal system* has been like King Arthur's sword, Ex- calibur, too trusty to be cast aside for any other.
This conservatism has been fostered further by the fact that the South has been so largely rural rather than urban in character. Complex sociologi- cal conditions have not existed, hence sociological and kindred studies have not been felt to be so urgent. Conditions are changing in these regards, however, and the process of adaptation will be in- creasingly necessary.
Political causes have also affected theological con-
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ditions in the South. The comparative isolation of the South from the political life of the nation since the war has resulted in various common moulds of life and thought. Political uniformity has tended to theological uniformity. By theological uniformity I mean here fundamental attitudes rather than specific creeds. At the present stage of man's development excessive uniformity is nearly always productive of stagnation. When social or political or religious life represses initiative and individualism in thought or action unduly, a great brood of evils invariably follows. The sentiment of loyalty is always strong in Southern men and women, and it is a tremendous factor for good when properly directed. What is needed in the South as elsewhere in the country is more adequate ideals in all spheres, ethics, social and political life and religion. We need to conserve all the sound elements in our present life and go for- ward towards our full destiny in the nation's life, the world's life, and above all in the Kingdom of God.
That our theological seminaries are awakening to a sense of their great calling to be factors in the life of the South is manifest in a number of ways. For one thing there is an increasing sense of the urgent necessity of making theological training practical, of connecting it with human life and human needs. To this end many additions have been made to the curricula of a large number of schools. English Bible courses are now quite general in the theologi- cal seminaries of the South. The Southern Baptist Seminary at Louisville led in establishing a chair of Sunday school pedagogy and method in 1907, and since then several other schools have undertaken similar work in one form or another.
The Southwestern Baptist Seminary at Waco,
Vol. 10—21
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Texas, inaugurated a chair of evangelism in 1908 and others will doubtless follow. Comparative re- ligion and missions is a subject receiving increasing attention, as is also sociology.
The Lutheran School in South Carolina has courses of study on missions and the Sunday school. The Union Presbyterian Seminary at Richmond, Va., teaches missions and has lectures on the Sun- day school and on social questions. The Louisville Presbyterian school has courses on the Sunday school, evangelism, missions, and was the first among Presbyterian schools to introduce a course in the English Bible.
Endowments.
The theological seminaries of the South for the most part have pitiably small endowments. The Lutheran School in South Carolina has only $30,000 ; The Cumberland Presbyterian School in Tennessee, $90,000; The Christian Bible College at Lexington, Ky., $150,000. A few schools have endowments ranging between $250,000 and $500,000. A much lar- ger number have no endowment whatever. For some reason philanthropists of North and South alike have seemed to prefer other schools than those of theology in bestowing their large gifts. And yet it is true that no class of men have done so much to mould the better elements of Southern life and sen- timent as the men sent out by the theological semi- naries. Southern people in the churches love their preachers and are loyal to them. The ministry of the South would be able to achieve almost anything if properly trained. Southern civilization, growth and progress wait upon them perhaps more than any other one class of men. The writer could name communities in which the preacher or preachers have
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literally created sentiment for public schools as well as schools themselves and have thus transformed those communities. With adequate endowments and equipments Southern theological schools would gain tremendously in their influence as social factors in the highest development of the people.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Broadus, J. A.: Memoir of Jos. P. Boyce (New York, 1893) ; Moore, W. 8. and Scherer, T. : Centennial General Cata- logue of Union Theological Seminary (Richmond, Va.) ; Robertson, A. T. : Life and Letters of John A. Broadus (1901); advance sheets of article for Methodist Quarterly Review of Nashville, Tenn., on ' ' Methodists and Theological Education ; ' ' Constitution and Plan of Union Theological Seminary in Virginia (Richmond, Va., 1906) ; Current annuals or catalogues of the various schools; articles in denominational encyclopedias on the schools named in the text; Re- port of United States Commissioner of Education (2 vols., 1907) ; American College and Private School Directory (New York, 1908) ; Patterson's College and School Directory of the United States and Canada (Chicago, 1908) ; Dexter 's History of Education in the United States (New York, 1904) ; Handbook of Learned Societies and Insti- tutions of America (Carnegie Institution, Washington, D. C., 1908).
EDGAR YOUNG MULLINS,
President Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky.
CHAPTER XII.
LEGAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTHERN STATES.
'HE most casual reader of the beginnings of American history must be struck with the conspicuous and important part played by the lawyers among that remarkable group of constructive statesmen who secured independence for the united colonies, and framed and launched the Federal government of the new Republic. James Otis in Massachusetts, while professionally resisting
324 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
the tyranny of the writs of assistance, and Patrick Henry in Virginia, while opposing in the court- room the tyranny of the Established Church, first gave voice to the country's awakening sentiment of resistance to oppression. Of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, twenty-five were lawyers ; while of the fifty-five members of the Con- stitutional Convention of 1787, thirty were members of the legal profession. This predominating influ- ence of those trained in the law is even more strik- ing among the delegates from the Southern states, for of the twenty-one signers of the Declaration of Independence accredited to the South, twelve were lawyers ; while of the twenty-five Southern members of the Constitutional Convention, thirteen were law- yers. But it is not only in the fields of national activity that we find evidence of the great ability, sound and broad scholarship, and patriotic achieve- ments of the Southern lawyers who distinguished this early period of American history. In the con- struction of the earliest constitutions and the first statutes of the Southern states, and the wise and liberal application of these laws to cases litigated before the courts, the services of such eminent law- yers as Wythe, Pendleton, Kandolph, Nicholas, Davie, Rutledge and Pinckney were invaluable.* The student of the achievements of these great law- yers and their scarcely less distinguished contem- poraries, quickly perceives that these men did not take merely the narrow professional view of the duties of the offices assumed by them, but in the
* See Wythe's opinion in Commonwealth v. Caton. 4 Call, 5. This Is the first reported case declaring the right of the courts to declare arts of the legislature which violate the constitution to be null and void. Decided in 1782 it antedated, by more than twenty years the fnmous opinion of Marshall, C. J.. in Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch, 137. It seems that in 1780 a similar conclusion had been reached in New Jersey, in a case not reported. See 1 Thayer's Cases on Constitutional Law, 62, note. See also The First Hayburn Case (1792) in American Historical Review, vol. ill!., p. 281.
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discharge of their duties, public and professional, they exhibited a liberality of spirit and breadth of vision indicative of liberal culture and broad schol- arship in the general field of law and politics.
We should naturally expect that such lawyers as these would look upon the law as a science, not merely as an art or a craft ; and of them we should also expect a full realization that adequate training in the law as a science necessarily involved in the development of good government, was essential to the public welfare. This expectation we shall see fully justified in the history of the development of legal education in the South during the period pre- ceding the War of Secession.
William and Mary College.
In 1779, a quarter of a century after Blackstone first began to lecture at Oxford, and before any American institution had deemed it necessary or expedient to establish a course of instruction in law, Thomas Jefferson, as governor of Virginia, reorgan- ized the faculty of William and Mary College. For professorships of oriental languages and divinity, he substituted professorships of modern languages and of "law and police." At the same time the professor of moral philosophy, at that time the eminent Bishop Madison, was required to teach the "Law of Nations and Nature and the Fine Arts." To the professorship of law and police was elected George Wythe, then one of the chancellors of the state. This choice of a professor for the new chair was most happy. Mr. Wythe had been the preceptor of Thomas Jefferson and of John Marshall. It is scarcely possible accurately to estimate the extent of the influence of this great lawyer and teacher during the ten years from 1779 to 1789, in which he
326 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
labored devotedly with the young men who gathered about him for the study of the law, and who later scattered to all parts of the commonwealth of Vir- ginia and into the western regions beyond the Alle- ghenies, taking with them those sound principles of law and justice, as well as of liberty and self-gov- ernment, which they had imbibed at Williamsburg. That Wythe 's teaching was thorough is apparent from the following extract from a letter dated Feb. 15, 1780, written from William and Mary College by John Brown, a young man from Rockbridge county, Va., who, after the completion of his law studies, removed to Kentucky and became a leader at the bar of that rising commonwealth, and ultimately one of its representatives in the United States Senate :
"I apply closely to the study of the Law and find it to be a more difficult science than I expected, though I hope with Mr. Wythe 's assistance to make some proficiency in it; those who finish this study in a few months either have strong natural parts, or else they know little about it."*
It is also interesting to note that Wythe taught law as a part of the great science of government. Attractive evidence of this is found in a letter written by Mr. Jefferson in 1788, advising a friend to send his son to Williamsburg for the study of law :
"But the pride of the institution is Mr. Wythe, one of the Chan- cellors of the state, and professor of Law in the College. He is one of the greatest men of the age, having held without competition, the first place at the bar of our general court for thirty-five years, and always distinguished by the most spotless virtue. He gives lectures regularly, and holds moot court and parliament, wherein he presides, and the young men debate regularly in law and legislation, learn the
* 9 William and Mary Quarterly, 76. The concluding sentence of this letter shows that this young student, in the small and poverty stricken days of 1780, perceived clearly a principle which has In later times been lost sight of by those law schools In the Southern States which hold out to the public as adequately trained for the profession of the law younjr men who have spent only some eight or nine months in the study of that science which young John Brown found so much more difficult than he had expected.
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rules of parliamentary proceeding, and acquire the habit of public speaking. ' '*
William and Mary had been most fortunate in the selection of Wythe as its first professor of law; but it was not less fortunate, upon Wythe 's resignation in 1789, in choosing his pupil, St. George Tucker, as his successor. This able and scholarly man, born in Bermuda, of an ancient and honorable Eng- lish family, had come to Williamsburg to be edu- cated just before the outbreak of the Revolution. Seized with a consuming love of the principles of liberty, he cordially espoused the cause of the colo- nies against the mother country, and served honor- ably during the Revolutionary War. In 1786 he had been one of the Virginia commissioners to the Annapolis Convention, which issued the call for the Constitutional Convention, and in 1788 he had been made a member of the General Court of Virginia. Of the loftiest personal character, of refined and scholarly tastes, and with a broad vision of the law, he proved not only an inspiring teacher for the young men who gathered in his classes at Williams- burg, but also an influential leader in the develop- ment of the law and politics of his state.f Like his great predecessor, St. George Tucker was strongly opposed to the institution of slavery, and in 1796 he published, in pamphlet form, an essay setting forth a proposed plan for the abolition of slavery. In transmitting a copy of this essay to the Speaker of the House of Delegates, with
•6 William and Mary Quarterly. 183 : Writings of Jefferson (Randolph), Vol. I, p. 346. It is worth notice in passing that Wythe's devoted labors in the cause of legal education at William and Mary were due rather to his love of the law as a science, and of his country, which he hoped to see well-governed, than to a desire to increase his Income, for we are told that his annual stipend from William and Mary College was eight hogsheads of tobacco. 9 William and Mary Quarterly, 22.
t Interesting sketches of the lives of Judge St. George Tucker and of his son, Henry St. George Tucker, by the latter's son, John Randolph Tucker, may be found in 1 Virginia Law Register, 789.
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the request that his proposal be laid before the legislature, Tucker uses these words that are well worthy of commemoration :
"My fervent wish is that under their auspices the day may arrive when the blessing of freedom will be inseparable from life in this Commonwealth. ' '
As evidence of his activity as professor of law at William and Mary, we have the five volumes pub- lished in 1803 under the title of Tucker's Blackstone. This earliest American treatise on law consisted of extensive notes to the text of Blackstone, which made up a luminous commentary upon the statutes and decisions of Virginia, and most especially, as an appendix to the first book, an extensive discus- sion of the text of the Federal constitution, and of the general principles of law that should apply in its construction. This first work dealing with the Federal constitution displays vividly the keen intel- lect and the broad grasp of the fundamental princi- ples of constitutional law possessed by this early Virginia teacher. Judge Tucker resigned his pro- fessorship in 1804, having rounded out the first full quarter century of the existence of the department of law at William and Mary. Probably no other law school that has ever been inaugurated in this coun- try has been so fortunate in having two such tran- scendently able men as successive professors during the first quarter century of its existence. Under Wythe and Tucker the law school at William and Mary reached the zenith of its efficiency and fame. This was a veritable seed time for these great teach- ers of legal and political principle. The harvest we see ripening bounteously during the next half cen- tury, throughout all of the Southern states, in the remarkable series of great lawyers and statesmen, who not only adorned their local bars and shaped
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the course of state governments, but even dominated the councils of the Federal government itself.
After Judge Tucker's resignation many able men filled the chair of law at William and Mary, but the glory of William and Mary was fast waning. Thomas Jefferson's powerful influence was withdrawn from it and turned to the development of the institution which was ultimately founded at Charlottesville, and called the University of Virginia. Even before the war, the Virginia law students had almost wholly forsaken the ancient seat of learning at Williams- burg for the newer institution at Charlottesville, and since the war no effort has been made to revive the law school which had done so much for legal educa- tion in the Southern states in fixing high standards of professional attainment and lofty ideals of political principle.
Transylvania University.
In the autumn of 1798 there occurred in the little frontier village of Lexington, Ky., a meeting which deserves to receive from a grateful posterity a nota- ble place in the history of education in the Southern states, and indeed in the United States.* The com- monwealth of Virginia had granted to certain trustees large tracts of land in Kentucky for the establishment and endowment of a seminary of learning west of the Alleghenies. The land was almost without value and unsalable, and six years after Kentucky had become a state, the fifteen trustees, who had been appointed by the Kentucky legislature to carry out this educational trust, were unable to raise sufficient money even for the erection of the small wooden structure that was thought nec-
* The only accessible source of information as to Transylvania Uni- versity is the History of Transylvania University, by Robert Peter, M. D., published by The Filson Club, of Louisville, Ky., to which the reader Is referred generally.
330 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
essary for housing the proposed seminary. But, in spite of the absence of money, and in spite of the fact that the new state was still thinly settled, with most inadequate means of communication, which was even yet endangered by roving bands of Indians, these fifteen pioneer Kentuckians, evidently familiar with the work then done at William and Mary in Virginia, laid broad plans for the establishment of the new seminary, that was to be called Transyl- vania University, which would have done credit to men who had the light that came with the experience of the next half century. Not only did they provide for the teaching of the humanities, as then carried on at Harvard, Yale and Princeton, but, in the inter- est of the public welfare and of good government, they established departments of history, medicine, and law and politics. The reader will not appreciate the significance of this statement unless he bears in mind the fact that at this time, in the relatively popu- lous and wealthy eastern states, practically nothing was being done in the leading institutions of learn- ing in providing for scientific instruction in law.* In fact, at the time these far-seeing Kentucky pioneers determined that instruction in law should be carried on in a regular department of the uni-
* A chair in political science, including natural law, had been estab- lished at King's College, now Columbia University, in 1773, but had met with no success, and had been abandoned after three years. It was not. until 1793 that a chair of municipal law was established at Columbia, with the great commentator, James Kent, as professor. This professor- ship, however, proved unsuccessful, and was abandoned with the retire- ment of Kent three years later, to be revived in 1823 by Kent upon his withdrawal from his judicial office in the state of New York. Kent delivered lectures with more or less regularity, but with very little popularity, until 1847. when the law school at Columbia was again abandoned. It was only in 1858 that the Law Department of Columbia University was finally put upon a substantial and permanent basis. See 4 William and Mary Quarterly, 265.
The law school at Harvard University was not established until 1815. Even then it met with little success until the Dane endowment, given in 1829, and the election of Justice Story to the Dane Professorship first made the law school popular and successful. Yale University offered no instruction in law until 1824, although the famous Litchfielrl Law School, founded by Judge Reeve in 1782, was in successful operation from that date until its suspension in 1833. See 6 Michigan Law Review, 647.
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versity, and in accordance with university methods, William and Mary College in Virginia was the only one in the United States that had come to an appre- ciation of the necessity of making such a provision for legal education. Those were the days of small beginnings in Kentucky, but of large ideas, large ambitions, and large men. George Nicholas, him- self a graduate of William and Mary, and one of the leading lawyers of the commonwealth, was appointed professor of law and politics, and on April 20, 1799, the advertisement announcing the beginning of instruction in the new university, informed the public that a professor of law and politics and a law library had been provided. Unhap- pily, Professor Nicholas died shortly afterwards, and was succeeded by James Brown, also a graduate of William and Mary. The records of the old uni- versity show that on Oct. 10, 1805, Henry Clay was elected professor of law, but shortly afterwards resigned to take a seat in the United States Senate. These Kentucky pioneers, like most of their Scotch- Irish contemporaries, had not the New Englander's skill in making records, nor did any of them think it worth while to write down the history that they were then making. Accordingly, we are not sur- prised to find that the records of the early days of Transylvania University are exceedingly fragmen- tary. We have no means of determining how long a period was required for the course in law, nor do we know, with any degree of accuracy, what was the average attendance in the earlier years. We have, however, a record of the names of nine law students who were graduated in 1814.
Beginning with the administration of President Holley in 1817 the whole university became very suc- cessful and prosperous, the total attendance in some
332 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
years reaching 350 students, drawn from all parts of the South. It is probable that the number of law students increased proportionately. In the rec- ord of a funeral procession of 1823 the law class is mentioned as one of the constituent bodies. From the years 1842 to 1848 there is an accurate record of attendance, showing that the average number of law students during those years was more than sixty. It is, therefore, probable that, during the quarter century between 1820 and 1845, the law school at Transylvania University was conducted upon broader lines, by abler teachers, and gave instruction to larger numbers of young men, than any other in the United States, excepting, possibly Harvard. The remarkable success of this remote law school during its flourishing period may be attributed partly to the great ability and sound legal culture of its professors, among whom, in addition to those already mentioned, we may record the names of Joseph Cabell Breckenridge, George Kob- ertson, and Thomas A. Marshall, all men of unusual talents and attainments in the law; but chiefly it was due to the noble and lofty spirit that animated those who had charge of its administration. The ambition of these pioneer educators for the institu- tion which they had established beyond the moun- tains, is well expressed in this extract from a letter written in 1817 by President Holley:
"This whole western country is to feed my seminary, which will send out lawyers, physicians, clergymen, statesmen, poets, oratois and savants who will make the nation feel them."
How nobly the institution, during its too brief career of usefulness, fulfilled the hopes of Dr. Holley becomes apparent as one notes in its register of students the names of two judges of the Supreme Court of the United States, a half dozen judges of
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the Court of Appeals of Kentucky, and other judges of the highest courts in other states, besides many members of the United States Senate and House of Eepresentatives, who have served well their country. Unfortunately, Transylvania's glory was short- lived. Although established as a state institution, it soon became the bone of contention between rival religious denominations. As each succeeded in obtaining control of the institution, it brought upon it the implacable hostility of all of the others, and then each in turn, when expelled from control, became an inveterate opponent, setting up rival institutions, which ultimately brought to destruction an institution which, in the wisdom of its founda- tion, the heroism of its inauguration, and the excel- lence of its early accomplishment bade fair to become one of the chiefest ornaments of higher education in the United States. In 1850 the number of law stu- dents had been reduced to thirty-five, and with the outbreak of the war the doors of Transylvania Uni- versity were closed, never to be opened again, excepting as a sort of annex to the denominational college which subsequently arose under the name of Kentucky University.
The University of Virginia.
The next Southern institution, in order of time, to make provision for giving scientific instruction in law, and the one in which such instruction has been carried on with the most uniform success, is the Uni- versity of Virginia.* As early as 1814, in a letter addressed to Peter Carr, Thomas Jefferson, in out- lining a plan for the university which he was then
* The statements mada here concerning the University of Virginia are based upon a recently published book by J. S. Patton, entitled Jefferson, Cabell and The University of Virginia, and Thomas Jefferson and The University of Virginia, by Herbert B. Adams (United States Bureau of Education, 1888).
334 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
proposing, includes as an essential department a professional school of law. Of this necessity Jeffer- son never lost sight. The report of the commission appointed by the Virginia legislature in 1818, for the purpose of recommending a general plan of public education, and for a State University, was written by Jefferson, and signed on Aug. 3, 1819. Among the subjects of instruction recommended in this report to be provided for in the university, are the following: ' i Government ; Political Economy; Law of Nature and Nations; History, being inter- woven with Politics and Law; Law, Municipal."
After the long struggle, which was necessary before Jefferson succeeded in securing the establish- ment of the State University near his home at Char- lottesville, and after sufficient of the buildings had been made ready to justify the opening of the uni- versity, Jefferson and his board of visitors set themselves busily about securing a professor for the newly established department of law. The profes- sorship was first offered to F. W. Gilmer, a brilliant, but exceedingly erratic, young scholar who had quite captured Jefferson's fancy; but Gilmer declined, as did Judge Henry St. George Tucker. The board of visitors then elected William Wirt, at that time attorney-general of the United States, as professor of law and president of the University, the latter office having been offered to Mr. Wirt over the vehe- ment protest of Jefferson. Mr. Wirt also declined. It was at this time that Mr. Jefferson is reported to have said in despair, that he feared the university might be compelled to accept as professor of law "a Richmond lawyer or some other Federalist." In this exclamation of Jefferson we perceive the real difficulty of the situation. The great apostle of republicanism was keenly opposed to any sort of
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restrictions that might be imposed upon teaching any science excepting that of government. He wished perfect freedom to be exercised in teaching philosophy and religion, but he was much concerned lest any political philosophy other than orthodox republicanism might be instilled in the generous minds of the growing youth of the commonwealth. To be sure that no political heresies should be taught in his state institution, he let it be known that he and Mr. Madison proposed to prescribe the texts which should be used in giving instruction in political science and law.*
At Wirt's suggestion Jefferson succeeded in pro- tecting the young Virginians who were to study law at the university from Federalist heresy, by appointing, as first professor of law, John Taylor Lomax, a very excellent lawyer of Charlottesville, who does not seem, however, to have been a man of any genius or broad scientific sympathy, and in gen- eral scientific attainment was probably not the equal of the young Oxford and Cambridge dons whom Jefferson had imported as first incumbents of other chairs in the university. Professor Lomax, how- ever, published two very excellent works : one on the Law of Real Property, and another on the Law of Executors and Administrators, which remained standard treatises on those subjects in Virginia for many years. Professor Lomax died in 1830, and was succeeded by John A. G. Davis, another local lawyer, who was sole professor until his death in 1841. Professor Davis was in turn succeeded by Judge Henry St. George Tucker, who resigned his position as president of the Virginia Court of Appeals to become professor of law at the Univer- sity of Virginia, which fact shows the importance
* See Adams' Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia, p. 138 ; Pattern's University of Virginia, p. 109.
336 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
which, the department had assumed in the common- wealth. It was Judge Tucker who, in 1842, for- mally introduced at the University of Virginia the honor system of student government, which had been foreshadowed at William and Mary, but which, at the University of Virginia, has reached a degree of efficiency and success which is causing its gradual extension, not only to the other institutions in the South, but to those in the North as well. In 1845 Judge Tucker resigned on account of ill-health, and was succeeded by John B. Minor, who then began that long career as professor of law which brought the University of Virginia Law School into the very front rank of American institutions for legal edu- cation. The attendance was rapidly increased, until, in the last session before the outbreak of the war, the number of young men engaged in the study of law at the University of Virginia was 135, a num- ber exceeded only at the Harvard and Cumberland University law schools. During the score or more years after the establishment of the school of law in the University of Virginia the course seems to have been rather brief and meagre, but with the increasing prosperity that became noticeable after 1850, there appeared a disposition to enlarge and broaden the course of instruction.
The Cumberland University Law School.
The next important seat of legal education to be established in the Southern states was the law department of Cumberland University, at Lebanon. Tenn., which was first instituted in 1847.* The rapid rise of this school in reputation and popu- larity was due, as in the case of nearly all successful
* As authorities for the statements In this section, see generally History of Cumberland University Law School, by Nathan Green, Jr., and Higher Education in Tennessee, by L. S. Merrlam (U. S. Bureau of Education).
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law schools, to the great ability and high character of the first professors. The trustees of the univer- sity were fortunate enough to induce Judge Abra- ham Caruthers to resign his seat upon the bench of one of the Tennessee circuits, in order to accept the appointment as first professor of law in the newly established school. Judge Caruthers seems to have been endowed by nature with rare gifts as a teacher. He at once eschewed the written lecture, which was the bane of law teaching in that day, and devoted his time to searching examinations of his students upon the text of standard treatises, and to severe and constant training in moot court practice. His own valuable work, now rarely seen, The History of a Suit in Equity, shows the accuracy of his mental processes and his great powers of lucid expression. Judge Caruthers' sound and effective teaching, together with the opportunity of intimate associa- tion with a lawyer of such high character and great attainments, brought about an unexampled yearly increase in the number of students that flocked to the law school at Lebanon. Beginning with thirteen students in 1847, there were eighty-six in 1852, at which time Judge Nathan Green was induced to leave the supreme court of the state to join Judge Caruthers in his work of legal instruction. Shortly afterwards, Judge B. L. Eidley and Nathan Green, Jr., were added to the faculty. In 1858, it is certain that the Lebanon Law School, with its 188 students, was the largest in the United States, and there is little reason to doubt that at that time, in this little Tennessee village, remote from centres of wealth and population, was being given the most scientific and effective legal instruction to be had in the entire country. From the establishment of this school until 1853, two years of seven months each were
Vol. 10—22
338 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
required for the completion of the course. After 1853, and until the closing of the school on account of the war, the course covered fifteen months. Young men came to Lebanon from almost every state in the South, and among its large number of ante-bellum graduates there are many who, on the bench, and in legislative and executive positions, have testified to the honor which should be paid to the gifted and devoted company of professors who taught the science of the law in Cumberland Uni- versity before the war.
Public Law at South Carolina College.
Between the dates of the founding of the law school at the University of Virginia and the out- break of the war, other law schools were established in the Southern states. Judge Henry St. George Tucker, while chancellor of one of the Virginia dis- tricts, established at Winchester, Va., a private law school, which continued with much success from 1824 to 1831, when it was abandoned because of Judge Tucker's election as president of the Virginia Court of Appeals. During several years the number of students studying under Judge Tucker reached almost half a hundred. It was while he was con- ducting this law school that Judge Tucker published, principally for the use of his classes, his Notes Upon Blackstone, which constituted a rather more exten- sive treatise upon Virginia law than that contained in the Commentaries of his father, St. George Tucker. In 1849 Judge John W. Brockenbrough established a somewhat similar private law school at Lexington, Va., which was maintained with very considerable success until the beginning of the war, and was subsequently, in 1867, incorporated as a department of Washington College, which subse-
LEGAL EDUCATION. 339
quently became Washington and Lee University. Other law schools were established at Louisville, Ky., in 1846; at the University of North Carolina in 1846; at Tulane University in 1847; at the Uni- versity of Mississippi in 1854 ; and at the University of Georgia in 1859. None of these law schools seem, however, to have been organized upon any very broad basis, or to have exercised any very notable influence upon the profession of the law or the political development of their respective states.
At South Carolina College no professional school of law seems to have been established before the war, but in 1819 there came to the presidency of that institution a remarkable, if somewhat eccentric, genius, in the person of Dr. Thomas Cooper. Dur- ing his term of service, which extended to 1834, he devoted much time to giving instruction in Roman law, public law and political science. He published a translation of the Institutes of Justinian, and also a work on medical jurisprudence. It is very clear that the bent of his active and powerful mind was almost entirely along the lines of public law, for when requested by his board of visitors to teach moral philosophy and metaphysics, he refused to do so, on the ground that such studies were a waste of time. His views on constitutional law appear to have magnified the peculiar rights of the states, and it is probable that to his earnest and stimulating teaching is to be attributed, in no small measure, the rather remarkable part which South Carolinians took in contesting the power of the Federal govern- ment to coerce a state, and ultimately in precipitat- ing the conflict consequent upon the secession move- ment. Dr. Cooper was succeeded in the same field of instruction by an even more remarkably gifted man, Francis Lieber. This famous scholar and pub-
340 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
licist was elected professor of history and political economy in 1835. While it does not seem that he ever found the political atmosphere of South Caro- lina wholly congenial, especially in view of his well- known opposition to the "peculiar institution" of slavery, he nevertheless continued to labor with great enthusiasm and efficiency in the class rooms of South Carolina College until 1856, when he resigned, shortly afterwards to become a professor in Columbia College, New York. During this period his activities are evidenced not merely by the great interest that was awakened by him among the stu- dents of the college in political science and public law, but also by the publication of the three treatises which have immortalized his name among scholars : A Manual of Political Ethics (1838), Legal and Political Hermeneutics (1839), and Civil Liberty and Self -Government (1853).*
Developments After the War of Secession.
As has been stated, the outbreak of the war caused the suspension of all the law schools in the South with the exception of that at the University of Vir- ginia, which continued its sessions with insignificant attendance. With the return of peace, or within a few years thereafter, all of these schools, excepting those at Transylvania University and William and Mary College, resumed their sessions, but with changed character. The extreme prostration of all interests in the Southern states consequent upon the four years of disastrous conflict, was peculiarly felt in educational institutions of every grade and char- acter. People who had little to spend for the barest necessaries of life, had nothing to invest in educa- tion. The broad plans, the lofty ambitions, and
* See History of Higher Education in South Carolina, by Colyer Merl- wether (U. S. Bureau o£ Education, 1889), pp. 143, 153, et passim.
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liberal educational views that had been so marked before the war, and had so remarkably qualified the public men of the South for political leadership, disappeared before the gaunt spectres of poverty and despair. When the law schools reopened their doors, the institutions with which they were con- nected were without income from endowment funds or other sources. The young men whose tastes and ambitions led them into the law were without funds necessary to sustain the expense of even a brief course of study. Hence, most of them were forced to rely upon the slender instruction to be had in law- yers' offices, and there were few who applied for admission to the law schools. Furthermore, during the chaotic period of the war, the entire educational system of the Southern states was disorganized, and educational qualification for professional life was impossible. Hence the few young men who were in a position to seek instruction in the law schools dur- ing the first decade after the close of the war, were sadly lacking in any adequate preparation for their professional studies. It was inevitable that stand- ards of admission, standards of scholarship, and even educational ideals, should fall to a low level. All of the Southern schools dispensed with any sort of requirements for admission, and all of them pro- fessed adequately to instruct young men in the diffi- cult science of the law, and to equip them for the responsible duties of a counselor within the short space of one session. As a single illustration we may cite the case of the law school of Cumberland University, the ante-bellum career of which had been so honorable. In 1866 it was heroically reopened, but despite the devoted labors of able professors, it was unable to maintain its former standards, and in 1871 its course of study was
342 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
reduced to the brief period of one session of nine months, and above this low level it has never since been able to rise. The University of Virginia Law School, on account of the great fame of that institu- tion, and the wide reputation of its gifted professor of law, John B. Minor, was more fortunate in attracting a larger number of students, who, during the first ten years after the war, averaged quite one hundred in number. But even such relative pros- perity did not seem to justify the law school in requiring of its graduates in law a longer period of study than one session, until 1894. At Washington and Lee University the date of requiring more than one session's study for graduates in law was even later.
With returning prosperity new law schools were established.* During the last decade, especially, the increase of wealth in the South has resulted in a more adequate support for its principal institutions of learning, and there is to be noted, during this period, a decided awakening among these institu- tions to the necessity of elevating the standards, and increasing the efficiency of the law schools connected with them. In this forward movement the North Carolina institutions have borne an honorable part. The University of North Carolina department of
* University of Alabama. 1873 : Vanderbilt University, 1875 ; Univer- sity of West Virginia, 1878 ; University of Texas, 1883 : University of South Carolina, 1883 ; University of Tennessee, 1890 ; Richmond College, 1870 : University of the South, 1892 ; Mercer University, 1875 ; Uni- versity of Arkansas, 1889 ; Wake Forest College, 1895 ; Central University, Kentucky, 1894 ; Millsaps College, 1896 ; Stetson University, Florida, 1900 ; Trinity College, North Carolina, 1904 ; State University of Lou- isiana, 1906. The Jefferson School of Law was established in Louisville in 1905, and in the same year the old Transylvania Law School was reestablished as a department of the Kentucky University. Divers other law schools of a more or less ephemeral character have been established at various times and places, but they have no historical significance, other than as indicating the disposition needlessly to increase the number of law schools, rather than to elevate the standards and efficiency of those already existing. It is worthy of note that in 1888 there was established at Raleigh, N. C., as a department of Shaw University, a law school exclusively for the instruction of colored men. This school seems to have been maintained continuously, but with a very small attendance. See Report of Commissioner of Education, 1906-07.
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law has, since 1887, required two years of college work of its graduates in law. Trinity College insti- tuted a law course of three years in 1904, and Wake Forest College in 1905. The University of Texas extended its course from two to three years in 1906, and with the session of 1908-09 has begun to require one year of college work as a requirement of admis- sion to its law school. The University of Virginia, Tulane University, and Vanderbilt University will require a course of three years for graduation after the session of 1909-10. These changes clearly indi- cate the strongly progressive tendency among the best Southern law schools to advance their require- ments both for admission and for graduation to the standard that has been set by the more fortunate institutions in the wealthier Northern states.
In conclusion, the reader will note that during the period extending from the establishment of the American Union to the outbreak of the War of Secession, legal education, as provided for the young men of the Southern states, was more exten- sive, more thorough, and more liberal than that offered in any other part of the United States ; that this was due partly to the fact that in the Southern states the early leaders were lawyers of great ability and sound training; and that, in turn, the excellent educational facilities provided for training the young men of the South to a proper conception of the function of a lawyer and for public service, had not a little to do with continuing that political lead- ership in the councils of the nation, for which the Southern states were so remarkable during this period. The destructive effects of the war were felt most disastrously by Southern educational insti- tutions, and the young men growing up in the South since the war who desired adequate and liberal
344 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
training in the science of government and law could secure it only in the great institutions in the North- ern states. Thus the prostrate South, deprived of its one-time civilization, and financially bankrupt, was further shorn of the very source of its former power, the right training of the young men who were to be its leaders in public thought and public action. Hence, no one can be surprised that this powerful influence, operating with others, has caused its former political glory to depart from the South, and brought upon it a long period of eclipse, from which it is fortunately now emerging. The rapid improvements recently made in facilities for education in law and politics throughout the South justify the belief that the time will soon come when it will be within the power of every young man in the South who has the requisite ambition and per- severance necessary for leadership to secure as broad and effective training in law and politics as can be acquired by his heretofore more fortunate Northern brethren, and that there will gradually rise up from the bar leaders qualified once more to restore the South to a position of influence in the councils of the nation.
WILLIAM EEYNOLDS VANCE,
Dean of the Faculty of Law, George Washington University.
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CHAPTER XIII. TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH.
The Economic Growth of the South.
VEN a casual observer must have observed great changes in Southern conditions and ideas during the last twenty-five years. He must have seen the increase in values of rural and urban properties; he must have seen a growth in population, commerce, agricultural prod- ucts, manufacturing establishments, and clearing- house receipts ; he must have felt at every turn the presence of that activity and well-being which we denominate progress ; but the full importance of this "progress" appears only when its record is tabu- lated by the statistician. Prom this source we have given us statistics of increase in population; of increased railroad mileage ; of increased production of pig iron, coal, coke, oil, lumber products, cotton mills and spindles and agricultural products, which are amazing. We are told that the South to-day is possessed of a population, a prosperity and an agri- cultural and commercial activity as great as the totals of all other parts of the country in 1880, and that, with the exception of manufactured products and the value of assessed property, is ahead of the combined North, East, and West of twenty-five years ago.
As interesting as these facts are to the historian, however, they are less interesting to the man of affairs than what is revealed regarding the potential future of the South.
In the South is raised three-fourths of the world's cotton crop, for which, in its raw state, Europe pays
346 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
annually nearly $400,000,000, or more than the world's yearly gold production. In its more than 777 cotton mills, with their more than 9,000,000 spindles, it has nearly a quarter of a billion dollars invested ; but it furnishes the raw material for three- fourths of the world's cotton mills with their 100,- 000,000 spindles and invested capital of $2,000,000,- 000. In other words, the South raises more than 75 per cent of the world's cotton supply — and there seems to be conclusive proof that no other part of the globe can successfully produce this staple as a competitor ; yet it manufactures less than 10 per cent of the world's cotton goods. The room for expan- sion in cotton manufacturing, therefore, is limited only by the South 's ability to provide skilled work- men and capital for new mills.
In the iron and coal industries, the South 's pos- sible mastery is not less emphatic. It is estimated that, at the present rate of consumption, the vast iron supplies of the Lake Superior region will be exhausted in about twenty-five years, and, so far as is known, the only source of the metal equal to the needs of the coming years is to be found in the South. Of iron ore Alabama alone has such an enormous store that it is now accepted that the three or four leading companies of this state control more iron than the United States Steel Corporation, with its 700,000,000 tons. Moreover, the South contains a total of 63,000 square miles of rich bituminous coal lands, more than four times as much as Penn- sylvania and more than five times as much as England and Germany combined.
Still, the value of the South 's resources in cotton, iron and coal scarcely exceeds that of others less generally regarded. To mention only three: (1) One-half of the standing timber of the United States
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is below Mason and Dixon's line ; (2) a magnificent water-power, capable of being utilized for electrical purposes, promises to make this section the centre of activity in that respect in America; and (3) the South, except in limited and more densely populated regions traversed by a few well equipped trunk lines, is notably deficient in railroad facilities.
This is surely as glowing a picture as one could wish; yet this presents only one-half of the picture. If one seeks for the ownership of the steam and elec- tric railroad bonds, of the enormous water powers, of the coal mines and iron works, of the timber lauds, of many of the large cotton and steel mills, the answer often is, "Eastern capital." The resources of the South are passing into the control of the alien capitalist. This condition of affairs has been inevi- table because of the poverty of the Southern people, and has been encouraged because the coming of outside capital has meant increased property values, more accessible markets, increased business, and more remunerative employment. Still, the fact remains that the major profits of Southern resources are devolving into the hands of the men of the North and East.
Technical Training Needed for Young Men of the South.
Certain definite truths follow from the above sta- tistics: First, it is evident that this region of immeasurable resources is going to be developed, and developed by Southerners or by outsiders; second, the North and East are fitting their young men to do this work ; third, if the young men of the South are to compete successfully with these trained engineers, they must be equipped likewise. The conclusion is an inevitable one. It is denied that our young men shall possess the output of these prop-
348 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
erties as owners ; but it is possible for them — and it is the duty of the South to provide that this be pos- sible — to receive their share of the rewards, as skilled engineers, as foremen and as managers. If our young men are not prepared for this work, the South is destined to suffer a loss, compared with which the material losses of war and reconstruction will be insignificant. Engineering is the one field where brains and skill are the only capital neces- sary, and where the possibilities of accomplishment and reward are almost limitless.
What Technical Education Is.
These truths appear sufficiently obvious to force one to the conclusion that the solution of the South 's economic and industrial problem lies in technical education. And what, then, is technical education!
Education has been defined as "an adjustment of the individual to his environment." Technical edu- cation is an adjustment of the individual to his environment by fitting him to deal adequately with specific industrial conditions. At the outset, it must be recognized that this has almost nothing in common with manual training. The latter aims merely to make the student familiar with tools and to give him a certain dexterity in handling them. Such training has a real educative value and such skill is a desirable accomplishment; but it is not "technical." The practical need in the industries for such trained hands is rapidly disappearing, except in the artistic crafts and in the minor branches of the constructive trades. On the other hand, the operations of the workshop and factory have become continually more complicated and exact; they demand the supervision of men who understand them, who know how to conduct them
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safely and economically. Theoretical and practical training are both required, and are complementary ; and it is the men who have received both forms of training who are needed in industry.
Again, technical education must be distinguished from something with which, by a popular miscon- ception, it is even more often confused; namely, industrial training, such as given in the Trade Schools. Industrial training is that training given to the carpenter, the machinist, the electrician, and others, who are then classed as skilled labor; it merely means that a man is trained to do one thing intelligently and well — as a tradesman. With extensive practical experience is combined such theoretical knowledge as will render the processes and operations he controls intelligible to him, and as will enable him to follow and apply current invention and discovery so far as it concerns his own branch of the trade.
The engineer stands in an essentially different relation to his work. He is the connecting link between the scientist and the skilled workman. He gives the theory and discovery of the scientist a practical and materially useful application, and passes it on to the trained mechanic to receive a definite and concrete embodiment. He is the constructor of ideas and not the builder of machines; he designs and superintends, while the mechanic forges the bar and rivets the plate. Neces- sarily he knows personally the use of the tool, but mainly that he may direct and superintend the other's handling of it. As much as the physician or the lawyer, the engineer is a professional man. With his practical experience must be coupled a deep scientific knowledge and a wide outlook upon human affairs; for success in this work a liberal
350 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
education is indispensable. Industrial training strives to teach a man how to make a living; but technical education, like all other forms of educa- tion, strives to teach a man how to live. It seeks to make of him a contributor not only to the mate- rial welfare of his country, but to its political, social, and moral well-being.
Here, then, we have a clear statement of the South 's problem resolved into the elements of its nature, its importance, and its possible solution. We look to see what the South has done and is doing to effect this solution.
Conditions and Needs.
General statistics in this connection do little more than emphasize the need which has been presented above. In 1901 there were in Southern colleges 1,605 engineering students. Assuming that there would graduate of these 60 per cent., — an assumed percentage far too large, — there would be sent out from this number 963 graduates, or 241 annually. In 1900 there were in the Southern states 14,707 civil, mechanical, electrical and mining engineers. Now, accepting the actuaries' reports, that at least 4 per cent, of every profession will disappear annu- ally, there will be from this body an annual loss of 590 engineers. So that the engineering schools of the South were at that time not supplying one-half of even the annual loss of this profession.
This surely is bad enough, but when one considers the industrial growth of the South, matters appear far worse. The increase in the industrial output of the South during the last twenty-five years has been 561 per cent., or 22 per cent, annually. In order to supply this demand on the engineering pro- fession, there should be added each year 3,235 engi-
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neers, a number which, by providing for the annual loss indicated above, becomes 3,825. This is sixteen times the output of our engineering colleges. In other words, for every engineer educated in the South, fifteen are brought from the outside. Again, in 1905 there were established in the South 6,000 new industrial enterprises. If the Southern tech- nical colleges graduated the average number of stu- dents,— -namely, 241, — there was sent out fewer than one man for every twenty-four of the new estab- lishments.
These are impressive statements, and become more impressive in the light of additional truths. It is conceded that Southern boys are intelligent, willing and capable. The president of a leading Southern technical school testifies from his long experience that * ' four out of five can be trained to do skillful work in some direction. ' ' They merely lack opportunity, and this opportunity our present sys- tem of education fails to give them. In each of the Southern states there are from half-a-dozen to a score of colleges for literary culture, and a single institution for technical training. It is not hard, then, to understand the conclusion of this same president, that "Our entire system of education rests on a false basis," and that "The basis of all education should be industrial ' ' ; and though we may admit the too radical nature of this conclusion, we must perceive the great truth which lies behind it.
As we have many times been reminded, however, all truth is relative. It is only the side of the canvas which presents the large need of technical education in the South that is dun colored. That side which records the growth of technical education in the South is as remarkable as any other phase of South- ern development; and this is saying a great deal.
352 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH. History of Technical Education in the South.
The history of Southern technical education begins with the so-called Morrill Act, which was approved by the United States Congress July 2, 1862. This act donated to the several states lands "for the endowment, support and maintenance of at least one college where the leading object shall be to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts. ' ' As the- ' ' recon- struction" of the Southern states was accomplished, gradually they accepted this donation, applying the funds thus derived in several ways. Some of the states used them to rehabilitate their old state uni- versities, complying with the provisions of the Mor- rill Act in so far that they added to their curriculum a department of agriculture which long held a very insignificant position in the college work; other states met more nearly the spirit of the act and established separate institutions for the teaching of these practical branches of learning.
• The first states to establish these colleges of applied science were Virginia and Alabama, both of which opened combined agricultural and technical schools in 1872, although the latter remained of little importance until Dr. William LeEoy Broun became president of the college in 1887. Texas established its Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1876; Louisiana in 1877; Mississippi in 1880: Georgia in 1888 ; North Carolina in 1889, and South Carolina in 1893. The University of Tennessee and Tulane also have excellent technological depart- ments. Florida and Arkansas are the only Southern states which have no distinctive colleges of this type. Besides these schools definitely technical, there are several colleges having well developed
TECHNICAL EDUCATION. 353
departments devoted to phases of applied science, which are doing excellent work. Prominent among these last is Vanderbilt University. The technical schools named above are generally associated with the state agricultural school ; in fact, the only South- ern school devoted exclusively to technological work is the Georgia School of Technology.
The story of this whole movement is best found in the lives of the men who were interested in its growth — who were the cause of its growth. No record of Southern technical education would be complete which failed to mention the names of Dr. William LeRoy Broun, Dr. Brown Ayers, Dr. Lyman Hall, and Dr. Charles William Dabney. During Dr. Broun 's long and brilliant educational career of half a century he taught in many Southern colleges, stamping his personality especially upon Vanderbilt and the University of Texas. His greatest work, however, was done at the Alabama Polytechnic Insti- tute, of which he was president from 1882 till his death in 1902, and for which he won much of the prominence and esteem that the institution now so deservedly enjoys. The most distinguished work of Dr. Ayers was in moulding — one is tempted to say in creating — the Tulane University at New Orleans. As president of the University of Tennessee he con- tinues his large service to Southern technical edu- cation. Dr. Dabney, now president of the Univer- sity of Cincinnati, did even a greater service to North Carolina ; he is literally the originator of the North Carolina A. and M. College, a work which he accomplished with small support and much oppo- sition. He was then, before assuming the presidency of the University of Cincinnati, for seventeen years, president of the University of Tennessee, where he
Vol. 10—23
354 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
devoted himself especially to upbuilding the tech- nical department of the university, giving it the prestige it now possesses. Dr. Hall's life work was centred in the Georgia School of Technology, where, in 1896, he became president of an institution of no reputation, but which, at his death in 1905, he left ranking among the prominent technical col- leges of America. Others have done, and are doing, much to promote this great work for Southern boys, but these men are the forerunners.
Technical education in the South has had to meet and overcome many retarding forces. (1) In the "Old South" there was a narrow and arbitrary social estimate of the occupations, which has been succinctly comprehended by Dr. Hall in the state- ment, "Twenty-five years ago it was impossible for a young man to wear overalls in the day and a dress suit in the evening." (2) A tendency among the present generation of Southern business men to esti- mate the value of education solely by its power to increase the earning capacity has made it difficult to carry technical education beyond the stage of industrial training. (3) The inefficiency of prepara- tory schools, especially in rural districts, has been a difficulty even harder to overcome. (4) A fourth obstacle has been the general poverty of the South, which has had the double effect of hurrying young men out of school into the world of business and of seriously checking the expansion of the technical schools because of insufficient maintenance. How- ever, necessity, a broadened horizon, an increased wealth, and a larger knowledge are gradually over- coming these forces, although insufficient income and poor high schools are two problems with which Southern technical schools are to-day finding it difficult to deal.
TECHNICAL EDUCATION.
355
The extent of the progress indicated above ran best be realized by referring to the tabulated state- ment given below. The writer has tried to secure full information from every Southern engineering college regarding the data given, but in some instances has not been able to do so.
FIRST YEAR.
Date of Opening.
Alabama Polytechnic (Auburn) 1872
Texas A. and M 1876
Mississippi A. and M 1880
Georgia School of Technology 1888
North Carolina A. and M 1889
South Carolina A. and M. (Clemson) 1893
First
Graduating Attendance. Class. 88 15
106 2
354 8
200 2
72 19
446 37
Totals
1266
83
YEAR ENDING JUNE, 1908.
Graduating
Class. Instructors.
76 44
57 48
58 49 39 45 52 42 85 47
367 275
Attendance.
Alabama Polytechnic (Auburn) .... 673
Texas A. and M 608
Mississippi A. and M 780
Georgia School of Technology 562
North Carolina A. and M 500
South Carolina A. and M. (Clemson) 700
Totals 3,823
Instructors. Alabama Polytechnic
(Auburn) 8
Texas A. and M 8
Mississippi A. and M... 12
Georgia School of Tech- nology 12
North Carolina A. and M. 5 South Carolina A. and M.
(Clemson) 24
FIRST YEAR.
State
Appropriation
Investment for Courses
in Plant. Maintenance. offered.
$100,000 $ 30,000 M. E. (about)
187,000 7,500 M. E., E. E.
174,857 20,000 M. E. (about)
135,000 20,000 M. E.
40,000 10,000 M. E., T. E.
250,000 50,000 M. E. (about)
Totals 69
$886,857 $137,500
356 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
|
YEAR ENDING JUNE, 19i State Appropriation Value of for Plant. Maintenance. Alabama Polytechnic (Auburn) (not available) { |
)8. Total Courses Income. Offered. M. E., E. E., 5 115,000* C. E., E. Chem., Min- ing, Arch. 246,930 C. E., E. E., M. E., T. E., E. Chem. 232,810 M. E., C. E., E. E., T. E., Min. M. E., E. E., 114,000 C. E., T. E., E. Chem., Chem., Arch. M. E. E. 173,050 Ch'em.',' C.' E., E. E., Mining. M. E., E. E., 201,477 C. E., T. E., E. Chem. |
|
Texas A. and M. . . . $1,000,000 $ 83,000 Mississippi A. and M. 855,300 65,946 Georgia School of Technology 660,000 62,500 |
|
|
North Carolina A. and M 512,420 32,000f |
|
|
South Carolina A. and M. (Clerason) 944,426 150,000 |
Totals $3,972,146 $393,446 $1,083,267
33
Taking as a basis of calculation only those insti- tutions where we have complete reports, it appears that within twenty-five years — the average age of the Southern technical institutions — there has been an increase, in attendance, of 302 per cent.; in the number of yearly graduates, of 442 per cent. ; in the number of instructors, of 400 per cent.; in the amount contributed annually from the state treas- ury for maintenance, of 366 per cent. ; in the value of the school plant, of 505 per cent. ; in the number of courses offered, of 413 per cent. One more phase of this development, which cannot be expressed in figures but which is probably greater than all the remainder, is the large increase in the efficiency of these institutions as places of instruction.
* The last Alabama Legislature gave an additional $250,000 for the needs of the institution.
t The last North Carolina Legislature gave an additional 170,000 for the needs of the institution.
INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 357
We have, in time past, heard much of Southern thriftlessness and lack of initiative in industrial development. In the light of the truths announced above, it appears the time is at hand when this taunt will lose all point and meaning. The South is waking to its vast opportunities, its young men are being fitted to take advantage of these oppor- tunities, and our schools of engineering are destined to become, as the years pass, a continually more important agency in preparing these young men for their high service in promoting the progress and development of the exhaustless resources of the South.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Mayo, A. D. : Industrial Education in the South (in the Publications of the United States Bureau of Education, 1888) ; Industrial Education (in The Annals of the American Acad- emy of Political and Social Science, Jan., 1909) ; Various articles in The Manufacturers' Record (Baltimore); Reports of the United States Commissioner of Education; Publications of the Bureau of Education; Catalogues and special reports of the various technical institutions throughout the South.
WILLIAM GILMER PERRY,
Professor of English, Georgia School of Technology.
CHAPTER XIV. INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH.
'OR nearly one hundred years, after the War of the Revolution, the people of the South devoted the largest share of their energies to agricultural pursuits. Large plantations occupied almost the entire country, with a few cities of prominence located wide distances apart. The chief crops were cotton, corn and rice, and these absorbed the largest share of the planter's attention.
358 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
The plantations generally were located on the exten- sive bottom lands along the rivers, and were owned and cultivated by the wealthy men of the South, descending from father to son through many gen- erations.
A few manufacturing enterprises were scattered through the South, but the capital employed was not comparatively large, and the talents of the young men, as a general rule, did not seem to turn in the direction of manufacturing pursuits. The well edu- cated men and women were satisfied to leave the matters of manual labor to what were termed the ''middle classes," and the building of manufactories and the development of the natural resources to a few men who had the inclination and the money for such undertakings. Although the South is rich in mineral deposits, and her water powers are remarkable in value and accessibility, it took the shock of the greatest war the world ever witnessed, and the fearful, devastating "reconstruction" period, to awaken the South to the importance of developing her natural resources and diversifying her industries. When her people became aware that the South could never return to the proud position she sustained prior to the war between the states unless the industries were greatly diversified and other enterprises besides agricultural were encour- aged, it became evident that there were but few insti- tutions within her borders competent to educate her sons for engineers and artisans. These few insti- tutions were, moreover, inadequately equipped with appliances and teachers to meet the demands.
The methods of tilling the soil and gathering the crops were largely left to the care and under the control of the overseers, — men who were possessed of limited education and often of only local experi- ence. The planter was generally a traveler, with
INDUSTKIAL EDUCATION. 359
culture and broad experience upon matters relating to the management of state and national affairs. His sons were educated for the so-called "learned professions" of law, teaching, the ministry and medicine. There were no agricultural colleges in any portion of the country, and the study of the soil and its possibilities was never contemplated except by a few men here and there, who were far ahead of their times.
In a few of the literary colleges some effort was made prior to 1850 to teach the application of sci- ence to agriculture. But in no institutions of stand- ing were courses in mechanic arts offered to the young men. The following may be given as prac- tically the only opportunities presented in the South for the training of men and women for industrial pursuits.
In 1796, Dr. John de la Howe of Abbeville, South Carolina, left the bulk of his property for the pur- pose of establishing an agricultural school. In The Higher Education in South Carolina, published by the United States Bureau of Education, it is asserted that this institution was the first manual labor school founded in the United States. Some years after the school had been in successful opera- tion the editor of the American Farmer spoke of it as follows:
' ' We very much doubt whether a very more really beneficent will can be found on record than the one we are about to mention. We have no information of the character of the deceased, nor of his wealth or will, but what is contained in an advertisement which we find in a South Carolina paper. By this advertisement it appears that provision is made in the will of the late John de la Howe for the education of twenty-four poor children, twelve boys and twelve girls. The trustees appointed to carry the will into effect advertised for a teacher to superintend a farm school as planned and provided for in the will of the deceased. They have provided a good farm, suitable dwellings, utensils, provisions and necessary stock, and offer a libpral salary for a teacher. According to the plan of the school in the will, the children will live together in one family, and the expenses are to be defrayed out of the profits of the estate with the
360 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
addition of the labor of the children on the farm. The qualifications required of the teacher show that the intention of the liberal testator are to be carried into effect to their full extent. He must possess an unimpeachable moral character, and suitable habits and attainments to instruct in all branches of English and scientific literature, sub- servient to agriculture and housewifery."
This school has been in successful operation for nearly one hundred years and is in existence at the present time.
In 1829 the state legislature of South Carolina took charge of the funds of this school and named the trustees. Col. Eobt. A. Thompson of Walhalla has kindly furnished the writer with the names of the members of this board, viz. : Alexander Hunter, James Allston, Eev. John T. Pressley, Dr. John Logan and James A. Black. Colonel Thompson thinks the successors of these trustees are still in control of the school.
E. K. Meade of Frederick county, Virginia, wrote in 1821 of the l ' expediency of the legislatures estab- lishing schools in each state to teach the philosophy united with the practices of agriculture. That sev- eral hundred acres should be placed under the super- intendence of a well informed, practical farmer who would lead our youths into the fields to learn and to perform every variety of labor that could be useful to them in their future professions, and on each of these farms there should also be a professor to lec- ture on the proper subjects and attend to the com- pletion of the best English education."
In 1829, J. D. Legare, editor of the Southern Agri- culturist, published at Charleston, called attention to the "necessity of agricultural education being bestowed on those intended for superintendents of plantations, and the benefits which would arise from proper encouragement being held out to respectable youths to engage as such. The Agricultural Society of South Carolina should establish a school to be
INDUSTKIAL EDUCATION. 361
called the Agricultural Institute, to be regulated as follows:
"1. There should be a lecturer on mechanics and mechanical philos- ophy, to understand which the student should previously be acquainted with mathematics. A knowledge of these subjects is important in laying out lands, banking, draining, etc.
"2. A lecturer on agricultural chemistry. From him a knowledge of different soils and manures, and soils appropriate for certain manures (a very important part, certainly, of agricultural knowl- edge) would be obtained.
"3. A lecturer who would demonstrate practically the principles pointed out in the foregoing lectures, as well as give a history of different domestic animals and the manner of keeping and raising them. For this purpose a farm contiguous to the city might be obtained by the individual undertaking this duty. The lectures to be delivered in the summer months and the lecturers to receive a specific sum from each pupil. In the winter it should be required of those who belong to the institution to place themselves under some judicious agriculturist, there to learn the management of laborers, and all the details and operations of a plantation. After a certain period of time, if the pupils have given satisfaction, a licentiate of agri- culture should be granted them, which would give character and standing to those intending to become superintendents of plantations and wipe away the odious and invidious name 'overseer.' "
Within four miles of the town of Pendleton, South Carolina, on Mr. K. P. Simpson's plantation, there was established, in 1830, a "Manual Labor School" in which was taught agriculture, carpentry, etc. The school was in charge of Kev. J. L. Kennedy, who was a successful teacher, and some of the boys who grew to be among the noted public men of those days were pupils under him. The school had but a short existence. It was broken up by an epidemic of typhoid fever and was never reestablished.
Efforts were put forth by some progressive men in South Carolina in 1836 to have the General Assembly pass a bill requiring the board of trustees of the South Carolina College to establish a chair of agriculture in connection with that institution. The bill was introduced in the senate and was referred to the committee on education. In due time the bill was reported back with favorable recom- mendation. The senate consisted largely of planters.
362 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
After a short debate on the measure it was defeated by a large vote on the motion that the step was use- less because "the best and only place to study agri- culture was between the plough handles and behind the mule."
Shortly after this incident, Dr. Thomas Cooper, president of the South Carolina College, in his annual report to the trustees also recommended the establishment of the chair of agriculture, but his wise proposition received the same defeat with the trustees which met the bill in the state senate.
In 1844, near Nashville, Tennessee, Franklin Col- lege was located, its charter having been granted January 30, 1844. The Southern Cultivator, in men- tioning the faculty, speaks of the following chairs:
"Tolbert Fanning, the president, was also professor of intellectual and moral science, natural history, agriculture and horticulture; I. N. Loomis, professor of mathematics, chemistry, mechanic arts and assistant professor of horticulture; John Eichbaum, professor of ancient languages and assistant professor of agriculture and horti- culture. There was a physical department attached to the college, to secure health, vigorous constitution, sound minds and good morals ; a sufficiency of agriculture to teach the properties and improvement of the soil, the proper cultivation of different grains, and the man- agement of the farm stock; also orcharding in all its branches, and the mechanic arts will be introduced. Each student, as an indis- pensable part of his education, will devote from two to five hours per day to some one or more branches of physical industry. The profits accruing from the labor, after paying for materials and rents, will belong to the student."
The Cultivator (1844) states that "this institu- tion is the first of its kind that has been attempted in America."
On the first of January, 1845, an agricultural school was established in Ashe county, North Caro- lina, under the patronage of Bishop Ives. It was a manual labor school and contained 500 acres of land with the necessary buildings. There was a liberal education given with the instruction on agricultural subjects.
INDUSTEIAL EDUCATION. 363
The Mississippi University in 1849 had a chair of " chemistry and its application to agriculture and the arts."
Gen. W. H. Richardson, editor of the Richmond Enquirer, in 1843, urged the establishment of agri- tural schools in Virginia.
The Terrell Professorship of Agriculture was established in the University of Georgia (then called Franklin College) by Dr. William Terrell of Sparta, Ga., July 27, 1854. In a letter addressed to the board he tendered bonds to the amount of $20,000, "the annual interest of which shall be applied per- manently as compensation of a professor whose duty it shall be to deliver in the college a course of lec- tures during its terms on agriculture as a science; the practice and improvement of different people; on chemistry and geology so far as they may be useful in agriculture ; on manures, analysis of soils, and on domestic economy, particularly referring to the Southern states; the lectures to be free." Dr. Daniel Lee was elected the first professor at the suggestion of the testator. Dr. Lee at the time was the editor of the Genesee Farmer and also of the Southern Cultivator.
The Southern Cultivator of August, 1855, in speaking of the establishment of this chair, says: "It is due to the history of agriculture as a science in this country that we record the fact that no other person in this great Republic has given for imme- diate use to increase and diffuse rural knowledge, more than one-fourth the sum donated by the patri- otic and distinguished founder of the first professor- ship of agriculture in the Southern states. A sim- ilar professorship was established a few years since in Yale College on the gift of $5,000 by Mr. Norton, whose son was appointed to fill the new chair thus
364 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
created. No paternal or family tie has in any way been associated with the munificence of Dr. Terrell." The establishment of the chair of agriculture caused Dr. F. H. Gordon of Tennessee to write to the Southern Cultivator in 1855 the following prophetic words :
' ' Your agricultural professorship may be regarded as the begin- niiig of an era — the formation of which will make a powerful impress upon the character, intelligence, wealth and future destiny of all the states. Permit me to express the hope that the University of Georgia will not stop short, and rest satisfied with an agricultural department alone. Though this by far is the most important to the country, yet in order to make a great, prosperous and learned com- munity, all classes must be educated. Persons in all the occupations ought to have a school where they can learn scientifically and prac- tically all that will aid them in their pursuits. It is, therefore, hoped that your university will ultimately not only teach agriculture, but will also teach the science and practice of all the manufacturing and mechanic arts; so that students leaving the university will be at once qualified, theoretically and practically, for all the trades they are to follow."
This was written about seven years prior to the final passage of the Morrill bill in Congress which established the agricultural and mechanical colleges in all the states of the Union.
The people gathered together on frequent occa- sions to discuss important questions of the farm and economy of living. There were strong and old agri- cultural societies in the South, the members of which were the distinguished statesmen and leading citi- zens of the country.
The Agricultural Society of South Carolina began in 1784, and at its date of first meeting, August 24, 1785, the first president, Thomas Heyward, Jr., one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, was elected. The first vice-president, elected at the same time, was Thomas Pinckney, a distinguished citizen of South Carolina, a minister to England and Spain, candidate for president of the United States, and a distinguished officer in the Kevolu-
INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 365
tionary War. Among the list of early members is to be found the name of Thomas Jefferson, and also those of many other great men of the nation in that day. The discussions before this and other societies of the kind in other states of the South supplied largely the lack of the industrial college. Those men who were the planters as well as the statesmen of the times, discussed before the societies the impor- tant topics of the farm and home life, and the trans- actions of the society were filled with a fund of information which was the traditional knowledge of the planter, rich in personal experience and the results also of intelligent observation. Through the efforts of the South Carolina Society the State Geo- logical and Agricultural Survey was authorized by law, and under Tourney this survey was vigorously prosecuted and from his pen came one of the clas- sical geological publications extant.
In 1847, Mitchell King delivered in the Hall of Representatives an address before the State Agri- cultural Society of South Carolina, which was replete with information far beyond the times, and reads like a bulletin of the Agricultural Experiment Station of this day. An extract is given here to indi- cate my contention that these agricultural societies were important educational bodies disseminating knowledge of great moment to the people. In speak- ing of the connection between the cultivation of the earth and the cultivation of the mind, Mr. King said :
"Matters of inquiry on subjects connected with agriculture are absolutely as boundless as the physical history of the earth which we inhabit. Every year is making new discoveries in the diversities of soil, of the elements of which it is composed, of the growth of plants, of what they owe to the air or to the elements of which it is composed, to the light, to electricity, and all the agencies in vegeta- tion by which, in the wonderful laboratory of nature, the grain pro- duces fruit after its kind, and the small seed becomes a great tree. Our cotton fields are exposed to many enemies, at one time a small caterpillar, that in summer changes into a pretty moth; at another time a large kind of caterpillar called the army worm; at another
366 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
time the cut worm or the cotton louse attacks the cotton plant and blasts the hopes of the planter. The Hessian fly lays waste the wheat field ; the locust that has been buried in the ground, it has been said for years, issues in its larva state, a plague, and spreads devastation and ruin in its track. These, and insects like these, are undoubtedly governed in their production and ravages by laws which are little understood. If we knew these laws we might be able to effectually check or entirely prevent their ravages. The accumulation of facts respecting these several destroyers brought together and reported at our anniversaries would furnish materials from which science might ascertain these laws."
In the agricultural journals and before the agri- cultural societies from 1820 to 1860 there were arti- cles published and speeches delivered on the impor- tance of industrial education, but there seemed to be no concerted and persistent effort put forth to build colleges where engineering and agricultural courses were provided for the training of the young men of the South. This fact seems strange and unaccount- able when we remember that in the first half of the century the Southern planters had established methods of farming operations, which not only brought great wealth and culture to the people, but elicited the praise and admiration of writers and observers from other sections of the world.
In 1847, John S. Skinner, editor of the Journal of Agriculture, published in New York, took a trip through the South, and the following impression made on him concerning the planters of the South shows that these men were great agriculturists and were well informed on many other subjects. The children of these planters were raised in an atmos- phere of culture and their agricultural training was practically given on the plantation. Domestic econ- omy and housekeeping were instilled into the daugh- ters by the most thorough and best housekeepers that were to be found in any part of the United States. The remarkable fact stands out boldly, therefore, that with all this experience, industrial
INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 367
education was not provided in the colleges of the country. Mr. Skinner said in speaking of that time :
' ' On few subjects does there exist so much delusion in the North as in reference to the habits and character and management of the Southern planter. Let him who would form a judgment go and see for himself and converse with them as we did in the social and public circle, and if we are not egregiously deceived, he must admit that they are nowhere to be excelled for that enlarged knowledge of the true principles of good husbandry which has been gained not alone from books, but yet more from eager and sagacious inquiry and con- versational intercourse, and from that best of all books, experience, in the resolute and skillful and industrious management of their own estates. Let the amateur or the connoisseur who would enjoy that most beautiful of all prospects, — large estates, well and neatly man- aged,— go and take a look at the rice plantations in Georgia and the cotton plantations of South Carolina and farther South."
One of the results of the war between the states was to awaken the South to a full realization of her helplessness in her struggles for high position among other peoples because of her lack of knowl- edge concerning mechanical and other industrial pursuits besides agriculture. The sad mistake she made in devoting her entire attention to the cultiva- tion of the soil must be corrected, and some of her people must become concerned in matters relating to developing manufacturers and artisans, and must encourage her sons to follow also the profession of the civil, mechanical, electrical, and textile engineer.
The Congress of the United States in 1862 passed a bill donating to each state and territory 30,000 acres of land for each representative the common- wealth had in Congress. The funds arising from the sale of these lands was to be used to endow agricul- tural and mechanical colleges in the several states. The war prevented, however, any Southern state from reaping an advantage from the terms of this law, and not until 1872 did any state avail herself of the advantages of these large sums for the estab- lishment of industrial colleges. "Reconstruction" being in full power about this time, much of this
368 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
treasure was stolen by the "carpet-baggers" and the negroes who were in full charge of state legisla- tures. When the white people came into possession of their government, with depleted treasuries and a people loaded down with tremendous debts which were the results of four years of war and nearly ten years of negro and "carpet-bagger" rule, they met with great difficulties in restoring these funds.
These colleges, however, in a few years after 1872, were established in all states of the South, and began the splendid work which resulted in the preparation of so many sons and daughters for industrial service to the country.
At first ridicule was cast on these colleges by many thoughtless people and by some of the leading jour- nals in the South. They were strongly and persist- ently fought by the classical system then in vogue in all the old colleges and universities which had held sway for so many hundred years in this and foreign lands. There were mistakes also made by the friends of these industrial colleges in attempting too much at first, and in some states in trying to ingraft the new education on to the old classical courses, with the lion's share of the time devoted to Latin and Greek.
In the establishment of these agricultural and mechanical colleges a serious difficulty at once arose because the South did not have a sufficient number of trained men to fill the engineering and other industrial chairs. It is astonishing that such good work was accomplished. There were teachers of eminence and marked ability filling the chairs of mathematics, language and literature in the South- ern colleges and universities, but very few advanced scientific thinkers were available. These few men, however, were wise beyond their times, and fortu- nately to them was entrusted the starting and plan-
INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 369
ning of these new industrial institutions. Such men as William Le Eoy Broun, president of the Georgia State College; I. T. Tichenor, president of the Ala- bama Polytechnic Institute; Gen. Stephen D. Lee, president of the Mississippi Agricultural College; J. M. McBryde, president of the South Carolina Uni- versity, in connection with which university the Agricultural and Mechanical College was established prior to 1890. In 1890, however, the college was sep- arated from the university under the name of Clem- son Agricultural College. These men, with others like them, did heroic and pioneer work with con- siderable odds against them, even among the people they were trying to benefit.
The dark clouds which hung over the entire South from 1860 to 1890 have passed away, and may the power of omnipotence never permit the people to suffer the like again. Rapid progress is being made in educating the young men and women of the South, resulting in intelligent attack upon the social, polit- ical and industrial problems which have disturbed the people for so many years. The present is bright with hope and the future is auspicious, representing an educated people, cultured, happy and prosperous in the enjoyment of the good things of this world. The South, restored to her important place in the councils of the Nation, is now in full control of her own people who are solving the problems of the cul- tivation of the soil and making the farm a place of beauty and source of wealth ; who have reduced the percentage of death by eradicating from land, air and water the causes of diseases, and who have made the bowels of the earth yield the wealth hidden therein, and jkarnessed to the factory wheels the water powers running to waste in the streams. These results of industrial education indicate what
Vol. 107-24
370 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
the future has in store for the South if all the resources are put forth under the control of the thoroughly educated mind and hand.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Higher Education in South Carolina and Other Southern States, issued by United States Bureau of Education; Southern Agriculturist, published prior to 1835; Southern Cultivator, published prior to 1860; College Catalogues of the older universities in the South; The Farmers' Library and Monthly Journal of Agri- culture, by Skinner (1846 and earlier years); Manufacturers' Record (Baltimore) ; Historical publications of Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina and North Carolina; The American Farmer, prior to 1860; Address by B. K. Meade of Virginia in 1821; Transactions of state agricultural societies, prior to 1860; Annual Report of Thomas Cooper to Board of Trustees of South Carolina College, 1836; South Carolina Statutes (Vols. V and VI); Richmond (Va.) Enquirer (1843; Gen- esse Farmer (1854) ; Address before South Carolina Agricultural Society in 1847 by Mitchell King; The Laws of Congress relating to industrial education; Soil of the South, published in Columbus, Ga., prior to 1860.
PATRICK HUES MELL,,
President of Clemson Agricultural College.
CHAPTER XV.
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION IN THE SOUTHERN STATES.
The Morrill Bill.
REMARKABLE feature of the revival of learning since the Dark Ages, is that at first the most prominent branches of study re- lated to things of the least consequence to the common people, and that it has taken a long period of years for the schools to give instruction in mat- ters of every-day life and of special value to the masses. There was a slight awakening to the impor- tance of agricultural education in the United States as early as 1800, but it required nearly sixty years for this to take the definite form of an appropriation
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 371
by Congress, known as the Morrill Bill, under which the colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts were established. This bill was passed in 1862 and granted to each state a total number of acres out of the public domain equal to 30,000 for each con- gressional district in the state. These lands were mainly for the purpose of endowment and the state was required to provide the buildings and equip- ment. It was impossible for the Southern states to accept the conditions of this Act at the time, conse- quently it was some years before these colleges were fully established in each of those states. An- other feature peculiar to the South in accepting this grant was that the funds were generally divided so as to give a portion to colleges for the colored as well as for the whites. Inasmuch as it was left entirely to the states to determine just how each state would avail itself of the fund, in a number of cases the college of agriculture was made a part of the state university, and in others they were made independent colleges of agriculture, or of agricul- ture and the mechanic arts combined.
These colleges have sometimes been criticized upon the claim that they have not given a practical edu- cation, nor have many of their graduates returned to the farms to be useful citizens in promoting the cause of agriculture. This criticism will hardly stand if we consider that it requires a long time to thoroughly establish any line of education and per- fect it. At first, upon the revival of letters, hardly anything was taught but the classics and mathe- matics and it took centuries before science was per- mitted to have a standing of equal rank with the classics. From this standpoint it would appear that agricultural training has made remarkable progress sixice the establishment of these colleges of agri-
372 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
culture, and a large share of credit is due to them for their general influence and for their leadership along industrial lines. They should not be judged by the specific number of men that have returned to the farm, but by the general uplift that they have given to the rural South. There has been quite a difference in the value of the work done by the sev- eral colleges; some have made most remarkable progress, others have not succeeded quite so well, but this difference is only natural and it has been made clear that all are putting forth an effort to do their best for the people.
The Hatch Bill.
In 1887 the Hatch Bill became a law. This granted to the several states the sum of $15,000 per annum for the establishment and maintenance of at least one experiment station in each state. This was a great acquisition, especially for the South. Immediately a corps of trained workers was placed in each state to investigate and develop the re- sources and to promote greater results along lines that were in actual progress. In 1890 the second Morrill Bill became a law, granting to each state $15,000 immediately, and an increase of $1,000 per annum until a maximum of $25,000 for each state should be reached, which would be a permanent endowment for instruction in agriculture. These appropriations by the Federal government placed the agricultural colleges upon a basis of independ- ence. In addition, the states as a rule were very liberal to the agricultural colleges and they were able to do extension work in addition to carrying on the work of instruction, and their field of investi- gations and experiments. This extension work has taken the form of lectures by the professors in the
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 373
various parts of the state, and of sub-stations which were designed to meet special conditions of soil or climate so as to afford aid to various sections that required assistance in agriculture. These sub-sta- tions have been exceedingly helpful to the people and have seemed to work in a very satisfactory manner, not only for furnishing information along special agricultural lines, but for the spreading of knowledge as to farm crops and the best farm man- agement.
Farmers' Institutes.
Another line of agricultural instruction has been generally undertaken by the states, known as Farm- ers' Institutes, by which the experience of the best farmers in the management of the soil, the produc- tion of crops, the care and management of live- stock, the better marketing of the products, and the production of fruit, in fact nearly all lines of farm industry, has been carried to every section of the state and brought to the attention of the average man who might not otherwise receive the benefits of such experience.
Agriculture in Primary and Secondary Schools.
Recently a movement has been vigorously pro- moted to establish secondary agricultural schools in each county or each Congressional district, which schools would be subsidiary in a sense to the agri- cultural college and would prepare teachers for giv- ing instruction in agriculture, or fit men to go on the farm and become managers of farms, either on their own account or for others. Several states, espe- cially Alabama and Georgia, have established quite a number of these secondary schools. It is too soon to determine their exact value, but undoubtedly the
374 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
problem will be worked out for the betterment of the farmer.
A number of the Southern states have passed laws requiring the teaching of agriculture in the common schools. This problem has not been fully solved, but it has set in motion a current of influ- ence which cannot fail to result in good. Many books are being prepared for the pupils of such schools, all of more or less value. It is no argu- ment against the establishment of these schools that they have not vaulted into the highest success at the first moment, because such a result requires time. It is difficult to secure, at the present time, enough teachers who are thoroughly equipped to adequately manage these schools. The fact that some states have already established them and others are discussing the proposition of starting with one or more so as to acquire experience and learn how to deliver the volume of information to the people through these schools, is worthy of note and shows the great uprising in favor of making a greater common people.
In a large number of schools nature studies have been taught for some time with considerable suc- cess. This branch of learning, when carefully taught, has been of great value, both to parents and pupils, and has opened to the people new lines of investigation which have been replete with useful knowledge.
Work of the Department of Agriculture.
Within the last twelve years, another line of help has entered the Southern states with great vigor and that is the United States Department of Agri- culture. Under the leadership of James Wilson, secretary of agriculture, nearly all lines of work
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 375
related to the farms have received most helpful attention. From his statesman-like standpoint he has felt it necessary that all parts of the Union should be strengthened, and that the only way to make a great state was to broaden the knowledge of the people in regard to rural matters, and give them independence by increasing their incomes. Nearly every industry in the South connected with agriculture has been wonderfully helped by the specialists that this department has sent to their aid. The Farmers' Cooperative Demonstration Work, which is the rural free delivery of the world's best seeds, plants, methods, utilities and knowledge, to the various localities for their betterment, has been established and maintained by congressional appropriation, and by large contributions from the General Education Board of New York. The object of this work is not to plant here and there a thor- oughly trained and highly cultured farmer, but to create a mass greatness and refinement by increas- ing the income of the average toiler. It has been most effective in securing this result.
Among the notable things done for the education of the masses should be mentioned the establish- ment of schools for the colored people, which have tended to direct them toward industrial occupa- tions. Notable among these, and as leaders, should be mentioned the great industrial school at Hamp- ton, Va., and the one at Tuskegee, Ala. Hundreds of smaller schools along the same lines are in suc- cessful operation.
Farmers' Unions.
The organization of thousands of farmers under the name of " Farmers' Unions" is a sufficient proof that the industrial influences have reached the heart
376 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
of the people. More than 2,000,000 farmers in the Southern states are thus trying to work out the problems of the farm and give aid and information along lines that are exceedingly helpful. They are especially active in urging that the farmers shall produce their own home supplies upon the farm; that they shall be free from debt so as to be able to handle their crops according to their own best inter- ests. The very fact of their teaching cooperative buying and selling has been a wonderful power for good. This cooperative effort shows an advance in civilization, and an appreciation of how one man can aid another, and that the joint forces of a body of well-organized men is more powerful than indi- vidual effort.
Agricultural Press; Rural Free Delivery.
One of the most active and influential forces in any state is the press. The entire press of the South has been favorable to agriculture, but the agricultural press is especially to be commended. It includes some of the most valuable journals in the whole country. They are filled with the best information and go to every section with a message of good and an inspiration to stand upon a higher plane. In this connection it should be mentioned that the rural free delivery of mails is a most valu- able gain to the farmer. The man living in an iso- lated locality, remote from the centres of trade, is rather inclined to withdraw from society and the influences which are affecting the country. This rural free delivery has greatly stimulated the ten- dency of the people to read and become informed upon topics of interest. It is helpful, not only to the farm, but to state and national progress.
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 377
Demonstration Methods.
It is not assumed here that in these various lines of education and training the states have done their whole duty. A whole body of useful learning can be introduced into the common schools by demon- stration methods. To test this about one thousand school boys in Mississippi were organized into clubs in 1908 under their teachers and each planted a half acre of cotton or corn on his father's farm. The results were exceedingly satisfactory.
The United States Cooperative Demonstration Work furnishes the plans of organization, the seed and the instructions for producing the crop; the farmers furnish land, teams and implements; the merchants and bankers provide the premiums; and all the people enter into the movement. This school- boy organization was a marvelous success in every way and the father learned as quickly as the boy. One boy in Mississippi made 120 bushels of corn to the acre, 14 bushels being about the average product in the state. The boys held meetings, dis- cussed farm problems and achieved something of which they were proud and that gave them hope. Another interesting point — it cost less than $50 per county to organize, furnish seed and instruct from 300 to 400 boys, because every agent employed was already paid by the state. It shows what can be accomplished by forces already under pay if re- directed and inspired.
Take the common school. It touches every rural community. If the teacher knows enough agricul- ture to readjust production in his locality, and will endeavor to direct and encourage the farmers, or in case the teacher be a woman, if she will organize housekeepers' clubs and give instruction, teach sewing, cooking, hygiene, with talks about poultry
378 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
and the garden, what a power for good the rural school will become. This cannot be accomplished until the masses become more prosperous. As it is, the rural school is an educating force with mainly one direction and one injunction. The direction leads away from the farm and the injunction is "Get away from the plow and the kitchen and become a George Washington, or a Frances Willard. It is old fashioned to settle down and have common honesty and be useful to the world."
If it be essential to the nation that there be a great common people, then some of our colleges and seminaries should point that way and try to build up a higher common life.
Every book from the first reader to the most exhaustive treatise on science, philosophy or litera- ture and every school from the pedagogic cabin on the mountain side to the greatest university in the land has joined in teaching the plow boy that he can become president of the United States if he will acquire an education. Our national weakness to-day is lack of integrity, competency and faithfulness in the common walks of life.
What the Agricultural College Should Be and Teach.
Our colleges of agriculture have done a great work, but the people should rally around them, in- crease their resources and broaden their activities. The state agricultural college should be a part of the state government as essentially as the United States department of agriculture is a part of the national administration.
In addition to teaching youth it should plan and execute. It should have charge of the state con- servation forces, the soil, the water, the forests, the mines, the fisheries, etc. Thus could be organized
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 379
admirable extensions of the national work under state supervision and control. All the departments of education should reach out towards the most effective accomplishment. In this way the college would prepare in the class room and furnish the field work for a body of young men fitted for useful service in the upbuilding of a state. It is time the antiquated plan of one class teaching and the other practicing, a class of leisure and a class of toil (inherited from a period when there were only two classes — master and slave) was abolished. The new life demands that the one who plans shall execute. The preacher must lead ; the teacher must do things ; the professors in industrial colleges must be men of affairs. There must be no leisure class. By such extension of the forces already in the field the rural South will come into its rightful heritage of prosperity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Bulletins and Publications of the Agricultural Col- leges and Experiment Stations of the United States; Reports of U. S. Dept. of Agriculture; Congressional Eecords; The Encyclopedia Americana; General agricultural literature.
SEAMAN A. KNAPP,
Agent in Charge Farmers' Cooperative Demonstration Work in the Southern States.
380 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER XVI. THE KINDERGARTEN IN THE SOUTH.
i
N fche forty or more years since its final estab- lishment in the United States the kinder- garten has spread throughout the entire country. In the East and West and in the New England states it has passed its experimental stage and has become an integral part of the public school system in practically all cities and towns of any proportion. The South has been slow in adopt- ing it. There we find it in all stages, from the period of swaddling clothes to confident youth and well-established maturity. In spite of its conserva- tism, Richmond, Va., not only claims the first elec- tric trolley system, but also the first kindergarten in the United States. The exact date is lost to his- tory. It had but a short existence and its influence upon public opinion was "as smoke in air, or in the water, foam. ' ' It was some twenty years after this effort — about 1885 — that the kindergarten obtained any real footing in the school system. Private kin- dergartens of varying degrees of efficiency and ineffi- ciency existed 'tis true, but their life was precari- ous and interrupted and their influence sporadic The South, in common with other sections of the country, had to suffer from the well-meaning efforts of the young woman of leisure and small means, who, because of her fondness for children and a desire to augment her income, opened so-called kin- dergartens which bore about as much resemblance to the real thing as the chromo to art, or the quack doctor to the scientist. That day is over, and the kindergarten in the South is at last on a professional
KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION. 381
basis and no one dares attempt it who has not had a two-years' course in preparation.
The South now has an honorable record of twenty- eight training schools for kindergartners in twelve states. Thirteen states now have public school kin- dergartens. Of the remaining three — South Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas — the latter has incorpo- rated a kindergarten clause in her school law. ' ' The spirit is willing" but the wherewithal is not yet forthcoming. Thirteen states have kindergartens supported by associations, churches or mills, as well as private kindergartens connected with schools or independent. Missouri and Kentucky have public kindergartens for negro children. In all but four- West Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and Oklahoma —some provision has been made for this race by associations or missions. In only four states, how- ever— Virginia, Georgia, Kentucky and Missouri — is any opportunity offered to young negro women to be trained as kindergartners.
In the public work Missouri leads in point of time, having established public kindergartens in 1873. She leads also in numbers with 126 kindergartens to her credit. Louisiana follows with forty, Kentucky with thirty-five, Oklahoma with thirty, and Maryland with twenty-six. The others follow in varying numbers from thirteen, in Georgia, to one, in the huge state of Texas.
The First Kindergarten.
It was in the city of St. Louis, Mo., that the first public kindergarten and the first training-school for kindergartners came into being. In 1873 Dr. Wm. T. Harris, ex-United States commissioner of educa- tion, then superintendent of schools in St. Louis, established the first public kindergarten, with Miss Susan Blow in charge. Miss Blow offered her serv-
383 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
ices, having become an enthusiast in the new system of child-training. She acted in the capacity of both kindergartner and trainer and from her school have come the ablest and best known trainers in the field at the present time. St. Louis became the centre from which radiated in every direction the impetus to establish kindergartens all over the country, and Miss Blow, whose family were originally Virginians, has become the acknowledged leader of and interpre- ter for the whole kindergarten fraternity. Chiefly through the writings of Dr. Harris and Miss Blow the kindergarten has been put on its proper philo- sophic basis in this country and is fulfilling the prophecy of its creator, Friedrich Froebel, that the United States would be the best field for the devel- opment of his idea. Though attacked in many instances by what its founder would have considered educational heresies, it continues to grow in numbers and in public appreciation.
Kindergarten Associations.
The formation of kindergarten associations was the direct result of the St. Louis movement. These associations were largely composed of enthusiastic women who undertook to support one or more kin- dergartens for the purpose of demonstrating to the public school authorities the value of its training as a preparation for school work. In many instances the public kindergarten began in this way and was eventually adopted and supported by the school boards.
Such associations have sprung into being in all the Southern states and are, for the most part, full of life and energy. They have been very active in drawing attention to and creating interest in the kindergarten. In 1905, at the Knoxville, Tenn., sum- mer school, and at the suggestion of Miss Amalie
KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION. 383
Hofer, these associations formed themselves into a federation known as the Southern Kindergarten Association, and chose for its motto, "Kindergartens throughout the South, for the South, and by the South." It has succeeded in unifying and extending kindergarten interests and in raising the standard of work both in kindergartens and training schools. Their plan of work for 1909 is, briefly stated, as fol- lows: To endeavor to form a kindergarten depart- ment in each state federation of woman's clubs and state teachers' organizations ; to urge appropriations for schools, parks and public playgrounds; to endorse compulsory education and child-labor reform, and to increase the number of kindergartens. The president of the association is Miss Marion S. Hanckel, of Charleston, S. C. ; honorary president, Professor P. P. Clayton, of the University of Ten- nessee. It holds a yearly meeting, at which reports are read by the state secretaries. The last meeting was held in Knoxville, Tenn.
Importance of the Kindergarten.
A marked evidence of the increased interest in the kindergarten in the South was the invitation extended to the International Kindergarten Union by the city of New Orleans to hold there its annual session in 1908. The invitation was accepted and a large and enthusiastic meeting was the result, at which were representatives from every state in the Union and from foreign countries. There is every sign that the South is awaking to a realization of the importance of taking the child between his nursery and school periods and by means of a system which is perfectly adapted to his stage of development and needs, preparing him for the concentrated study of after years. He must acquire the powers of concen- tration and attention, observation and self-expres-
384 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
sion, self-discipline and cooperation. He must develop originality and imagination before he enters upon the work of learning, and at this habit-form- ing period of his life he must live daily the ideals which make for the highest type of manhood and womanhood. Statistics show that the child who has had two years in a good kindergarten goes ahead much more rapidly than other children and usually saves a year or more in his school life. That this is not always the case is partly due to the perversion of or imperfect application of Froebel's theories— sometimes to the unmodern methods of primary teachers. Of its moral influence Dr. Wm. T. Harris has said, in a pamphlet entitled, The Kindergarten as a Preparation for the Highest Civilization: ' ' The child from four to six years of age, the proper age for the kindergarten, has not yet hardened him- self through the influence of the slum, or through the influence of a too indulgent education in the nursery of a rich family, so as to be beyond the hope of cure through the school. The kindergarten is for this reason the most potent of all the instrumentali- ties used to overcome the influence of the slums which exist in our cities. The slum has been called the menace to civilization. It is certainly the men- ace to local self-government and political freedom. As a matter of self-preservation each city should organize a strong force of kindergartens throughout all precincts where the weaklings of society come together." Is not this a hint of the importance of establishing kindergartens for the negro chil- dren of whom the slums of the South are largely composed !
Growth of Kindergartens in South.
The following table gives the statistics of kinder- garten growth in the Southern states :
KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION.
385
|
o II! fit O3 Q, |
Present number |
When established |
Public kinder- gartens for colored children |
Association, mill and church kin- dergartens |
Association or mission kin- dergartens, colored children |
Number of associations |
|
Maryland |
26 |
1892 |
14 |
3 |
1 |
|
|
Virginia |
12 |
1903 |
9 |
4 |
4 |
|
|
West Virginia. |
4 |
1885 |
||||
|
North Carolina |
6 |
1907 |
3 |
4 |
||
|
South Carolina |
30 |
4 |
6 |
|||
|
Georgia |
21 |
1905 |
20 |
Q |
||
|
Alabama |
5 |
1894 |
18 |
2 |
2 |
|
|
Mississippi. . . |
4 |
1894 |
||||
|
Louisiana. . . . |
31 |
1887 |
4 |
5 |
1 |
|
|
Florida |
6 |
1905 |
21 |
2 |
1 |
|
|
Texas |
1 |
1906 |
25 |
2 |
5 |
|
|
Kentucky |
35 |
1887 |
7 |
12 |
1 |
|
|
Tennessee |
3 |
8 |
1 |
|||
|
Arkansas |
2 |
1 |
||||
|
Oklahoma |
30 |
1904 |
||||
|
Missouri |
126 |
1873 |
10 |
7 |
1 |
There are at present thirty-two schools for teach- ers in the South, located as follows: Baltimore, Richmond, Norfolk, Farmville Normal, Hampton (colored), Charleston, Bockville, Greenville, Savan- nah, Atlanta, Columbus, Macon, Atlanta University (colored), Birmingham, New Orleans (2), Tallahas- see, Stetson University, Dallas, Ft. Worth, Louis- ville (colored), Chattanooga, Little Bock, Edmond, Alva, Weatherford, Epworth University, Warrens- burg, Kirksville, Cape Girardeau, St. Louis.
A word as to the education of Southern young women. The South has ever stood for the ideal of home and family life. The education which trains for her a wise motherhood is directly in line with her ideals. In the education of women in women's col- leges an effort is being made to introduce household and (Jomsel^arts — preparation for the woman's life of wif ehood and motherhood ; but is there not some- thing more to be learned about motherhood than merely the physical nurture? Should the spiritual and intellectual nurture be left any longer to mere instinct? The ideal woman's college should include not only the culture studies and training in house-
Vol. 10—25
386 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
hold arts, but that specific preparation for training the mind and heart of the child which is best learned through the study of Froebel's principles of child nurture. Then, indeed, should we have a new gen- eration. Shall we not look to the South to train this highest type of womanhood ?
BIBLOGEAPHY. — Reports of State Boards of Education; Keports of president and secretaries of Southern Kindergarten Association; Re- ports from United States Bureau of Education, viz.: Statistics of City School Systems, Statistics of Public and Private Kindergartens, Early History of the Kindergarten in St. Louis, Mo., and The Kin- dergarten, by Miss Laura Fisher.
ALICE N. PARKER,
Bichmoncl, Va.
CHAPTER XVII.
GENERAL EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES IN THE SOUTH.
"'HE question of the supervision of educa- tion throughout the United States has been during its whole history a matter in confu- sion. Under the constitution of the United States the General government does not assume the support or direction of education. This is left entirely to the states. It is true that the United States maintains a Bureau of Education, but the work of this office has been almost wholly statistical and its director has no power to supervise the educational systems of the various states.
In the states themselves the supervision of educa- tion has rested in the hands of a superintendent, either elected or appointed. His authority, however, has never extended beyond the limits of the sec-
EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES. 387
ondary schools. The state universities and state col- leges, no less than those on private foundation, have not been under the supervision of any central author- ity, nor has there been in the various states any agency whose business it was to scrutinize or to report upon the work of these institutions of higher learning.
It is partly out of the lack of any central super- vision, either from the National government or from the state, that there have grown up various boards which seek in the first place to stimulate education, and in the second place to criticize and in a measure direct it. These boards may be roughly classed in two groups: denominational boards of education organized with the purpose of making more effective the educational agencies of the denomination; sec- ondly, institutions resting upon endowment fur- nished by individuals. These last have no formal authority over educational institutions, but are seek- ing to deal with education from the standpoint of a whole section or of the whole country. Some of these agencies are devoted entirely to the South; in the case of others the field of work covers the United States ; and in the case of the Carnegie Foun- dation for the Advancement of Teaching, Canadian educational institutions and interests are included, as well as those of the United States. These agencies in the order of their establishment are the following :
When founded.
1. The Peabody Education Fund 1867
2. The Slater Fund 1882
3. The Southern Education Board 1901
4. The General Education Board 1903
5. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. 1905
6. The Russell Sage Foundation 1907
7. The Jeanes Fund 1907
The Peafcody Education Fund. This fund, established in 1867 by George Peabody,
388 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
was instituted for the express purpose of serving education in the South. In the language of the articles of endowment the money was to be used for promoting "intellectual, moral and industrial edu- cation in the most destitute portion of the Southern states."
The first gift consisted of securities amounting to $2,100,000, of which $1,000,000 were in Mississippi state bonds. These bonds were afterwards repudi- ated, and Mr. Peabody gave an additional $1,000,000 in 1869. Of this sum $384,000 were Florida bonds issued while that state was a territory, which bonds for certain reasons have never been recognized as legal by the state. The fund was placed in charge of fifteen trustees who were well-known men, Robert C. Winthrop, of Massachusetts, being the first chairman.
The trustees had authority to spend the interest and 40 per cent, of the principal the first two years. After that time such principal as remained was to continue intact for thirty years, when the whole amount might be divided and distributed for edu- cational purposes, as the judgment of the then trustees might determine.
The rules governing the use of this fund have been broad and precautions ; they have always aimed not to interfere with established schools. On the other hand, efforts were made to work with existing schools, to strengthen schools that were weak, and to promote especially elementary education. As a rule, no school has received aid unless it had in attendance at least 100 students and maintained a school for ten months in the year. A district desir- ing a share of the fund was asked to contribute twice the amount granted by the trustees. A school having an attendance of 100 pupils and complying with other conditions might have $300: if 200 pupils were
EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES. 389
in attendance, it might have $600 ; and a school with 300 in attendance might have $1,000. Normal schools and training schools for teachers have received spe- cial attention, and scholarships have been granted to many deserving pupils. These scholarships were at first $200, later $100.
From the establishment of the fund in 1867 to the end of the thirty years, the total amount paid out was about $2,600,000, the greater part of this being used in the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.
The trustees of this foundation have for some years been seriously considering the question of distributing the money to particular institutions and closing the trust. In January, 1905, a resolution to this effect was adopted and the terms upon which the distribution should be made were agreed upon. These terms require the completion of certain con- ditions on the part of other persons or institutions. There is every reason to suppose that these condi- tions will be met, so that it is extremely likely that within a limited period this agency will cease to exist as a separate educational force.
The present officers of the Peabody board are: President, Chief Justice Melville W. Fuller, 1901 F street N. W., Washington, D. C. ; secretary, Samuel A. Green, 1154 Boylston street, Boston, Mass. ; gen- eral agent, Wickliffe Eose, 2 Rector street. New
York.
The John F. Slater Fund.
The Slater Fund was the gift of John Fox Slater, of Norwich, Conn., to the cause of educating the negroes of the South, and originally consisted of the sum of $1,000,000. The gift was made in 1882 to a board of trustees, who were to hold the principal and
390 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
expend the interest in promoting institutions already established on a permanent basis. In acknowledg- ment of this philanthropy Congress voted the donor thanks and a medal. By the terms of the gift neither principal nor income is to be expended on building or grounds. The fund is expended principally in helping students of, and preparing teachers for, the manual training schools, agricultural and mechanical colleges and technological institutions.
The fund is a potential agency in working out the problem of the education of the negro, and over $500,000 have already been expended. By the extraor- dinary fidelity and financial ability of the treasurer (Morris K. Jesup) the fund, while keeping up annual appropriations, has increased to $1,500,000. Schools established by states, denominations, and individuals are helped by annual donations. Among the most prominent are the Hampton Normal and Industrial School, the Spelman School, the Tuskegee School, and schools at Orangeburg, S. C. ; Tougaloo, Miss.; Marshall, Tex. ; Ealeigh, N. C. ; New Orleans. La. ; the Meharry Medical College, at Nashville, etc.
The present officers of the board are: President, Chief Justice Melville W. Fuller, 1801 F street N. W., Washington, D. C. ; general agent, Dr. Wallace Buttrick, 2 Eector street, New York City.
The Southern Education Board.
There began some years ago in a most modest way a series of conferences for education in the South. The moving spirit in this effort was Mr. Robert C. Ogden, of New York, and he gathered about him a group of earnest and influential men, coming both from the South and from the North. The fourth of these conferences was held at Winston- Salem in 1901, at which place a number of Southern leaders of eminence were present. Out of these con-
EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES. 391
ferences grew the conviction expressed in a resolu- tion adopted at this meeting that the time had come for the organization of an executive board to deal with education in the South. The naming of this board was left to the president, Mr. Ogden, and he was added by special vote as a member of the board. The board was finally brought together in August, 1901, under the name of the Southern Education Board, and included, besides Mr. Ogden, Dr. J. L. M. Curry, President E. A. Alderman, Mr. C. D. Mclver, President C. W. Dabney, Dr. H. B. Frissell, Dr. Wallace Buttrick, and Mr. George Foster Peabody. Mr. William H. Baldwin, Mr. xVlbert Shaw, Mr. Wal- ter H. Page, and Mr. H. H. Hanna were immediately added to the board. There have been in all twenty- one members, of whom fourteen were natives of the South, and all have been identified in many ways with Southern interests and progress. Immediately after the organization of the Southern Education Board steps were taken to carry out the design for which it was created. Field work was provided for by the appointment of Dr. Curry as a supervising director, with Dr. Alderman and Mr. Mclver and Dr. Frissell as district directors, and with Dr. Davis as chief of the bureau of investigation, information and publication. With the view of making more effective progress in the work with negroes Dr. Booker T. Washington was appointed field agent. Mr. Edgar Gardner Murphy was also associated with the chairman as secretary in executive work and rendered service of the highest value.
This board quickly secured the cooperation of effective agencies in the various Southern states and began the distribution of valuable information throughout the South with regard to education and educational methods. By January, 1902, a thor- oughly organized campaign of education had been
392 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
entered upon, with the cordial approval of the South- ern press and of the Southern people. Printed leaf- lets were distributed to newspapers, copied into their columns, and sent abroad by thousands.
In general, the object of the association is the awakening of public opinion in the South and such a stimulation of public and private interest as will result in increased revenues for schools.
The Southern Education Board has no fixed endowment. Its annual income has been entirely supplied by personal contributions from year to year.
The president is Eobert C. Ogden, New York, and the executive secretary, Edgar Gardner Murphy, Montgomery, Ala.
The General Education Board.
The General Education Board is an organization chartered by Congress. The board had its begin- ning in a meeting at the house of Mr. John D. Kocke- feller, Jr., in New York, in February, 1902. At this meeting a temporary organization was formed and an effort begun for the securing of a charter from Congress for an organization devoted to the general purpose of education. A few days later Mr. John D. Eockefeller pledged to this organiza- tion the sum of $1,000,000. The movement was in large measure the outcome of the Southern Educa- tion Board 's work, and the income from the first gift was to be used in a study of education in the South. The board opened an office in New York in April, 1902, and began its work, its first task being that of a careful examination of the educational conditions and needs in the Southern states! Consultations were held with state officers and careful examination and study were made of the conditions of education throughout the South. As a result of their delibera-
EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES. 393
tions the board has formulated certain conclusions, amongst which are: First, the elementary school cannot be given to a community, but must come out of the community life ; second, on account of the fact that the South is largely a rural district with the exception of certain localities, the community spirit has not yet been developed ; third, one of the imme- diate needs is to improve elementary schools in the South so as to train farmers in scientific methods and to develop at the same time the community spirit.
The board has already accomplished much in its work for this cause. By two subsequent gifts made in 1905 and 1907, Mr. John D. Eockefeller has increased the endowment of the General Education Board to something more than $40,000,000. The general purpose of the fund is clearly indicated in the letter of June 30, 1905, from the president, Fred- erick T. Gates, announcing a gift of $10,000,000. In that letter he states that the sum is to be held as a foundation for education, the income to be used for the benefit of such institutions of learning or employed in such other ways as the board may deem best adapted to promote a comprehensive system of higher education in the United States. In other words, here is an agency firmly established, which for the first time in the history of the country under- takes to deal, not with localities or with isolated institutions, but with a comprehensive system of edu- cation for the whole country. Here for the first time in the organization of any board is frankly stated the truth that education for the United States is one and that it must be studied as a whole, if it is to serve in the largest sense the needs of the whole people.
Since the reception of this gift in 1905 and 1907, the General Education Board has gone forward to
394 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
study education from this standpoint. It has in the South assisted colleges and also administered to the effort to disseminate information concerning agricul- tural education, to quicken the intelligence of those engaged in agriculture, and to foster as directly as possible through education the economic qualities of the South, as being the quickest means to the attainment of high educational ideals. The work of the board now covers the whole of the United States. It makes careful studies of the status of education in the various states, and seeks by the use of its funds to aid not merely single institutions, but the general system of education of the region and of the state. Its work in this direction is of the highest importance and in the future is likely to be one of the large factors which shall bring about in the end not only great educational improvement in particular sections, but shall also count for a comprehensive system of education for the whole country.
The president is Frederick T. Gates, and the secretary, Dr. Wallace Buttrick, 2 Eector street, New York.
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching had its inception in a letter of Mr. Andrew Carnegie of date April 16, 1905, in which he conveyed to the board of trustees designated in this letter $10,000,000 of 5 per cent bonds of the United States Steel Corporation to constitute a fund for the establishment of retiring allowances in col- leges and to serve generally the cause of higher edu- cation in the United States, Canada and Newfound- land. In the spring of 1906 the board, which con- sists of twenty-five trustees, received from the Con- gress of the United States a charter of broad char- acter which enables them to undertake not only the
EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES. 395
work of establishing retiring allowances for teach- ers, but also enables them to undertake any work which has to do with the betterment of the teacher's calling or the promotion of higher education.
Beginning its work in 1906 under these general conditions, those in charge of the Foundation quickly recognized that in order to serve education in the United States and Canada efficiently it would be nec- essary to make of the Foundation an educational agency, not a charitable institution. It therefore immediately proceeded to study the standards of the various colleges of the United States and Canada and has adopted certain standards under which it admits to the system of retiring allowances institu- tions of learning. It has thus become immediately a standardizing agency both in the United States and Canada, and with the aid of its large endow- ment and with the material benefits which it is able to give to institutions of learning has already begun to exert a strong influence in the unifying of education.
In the original gift of Mr. Carnegie institutions supported and controlled by a state or province were not included, but in the spring of 1908 he sent a com- munication to the board of trustees offering to add $5,000,000 of 5 per cent bonds to enable the Founda- tion to include such state universities as might, with the consent of their legislatures, apply. This gift was accepted by the trustees, and state institutions which conform to the requisite standards are, there- fore, now eligible. The total funds at the command of the board of trustees now amount to something over $15,000,000, and the work of the Foundation for the next ten or fifteen years will lie in large measure in the direction of standardization of col- leges and universities, and in the preparation of careful studies setting forth the conditions of edu-
396 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
cation and the possible opportunities for its improve- ment. Annual reports are published by the Foun- dation containing educational statistics and bulletins on special subjects are printed from time to time. These may be had on application to the officers.
The president is Henry S. Pritchett, and the sec- retary, John G. Bowman; offices, 576 Fifth avenue, New York.
In April, 1907, there was incorporated under the laws of New York, by special charter, the Eussell Sage Foundation. The endowment of the Founda- tion consists of $10,000,000, a gift from Mrs. Mar- garet Olivia Sage, the widow of the late Russell Sage. The purpose of the Foundation is denned in its charter to be the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States. It is denned to be within the purposes of the corporation to use such means to that end as may from time to time seem desirable to its trustees ; such, for example, as social and scientific research, the publication of information, education, the establishment and main- tenance of charitable agencies or institutions, or the aid of such agencies or institutions already established which are engaged in the study or improvement of social conditions.
There are nine trustees of the Foundation, of whom Mrs. Sage is herself one.
The Sage Foundation, during the brief period of its existence, has had time only to examine the field and to take up certain preliminary studies. It has begun certain enquiries into social conditions in large cities, such as New York and Pittsburg, and has made studies of the economic factors relating to the physical, moral and social condition of work- ing people. Its work may be extended under its
EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES. 397
charter to any part of the United States, and doubt- less in the end a certain part of its energy will be expended in the South.
The president is Mrs. Russell Sage, and the secre- tary and director, John M. Glenn; offices, 105 East Twenty-second street, New York.
The Jeanes Fund for Negro Rural Schools.
By the will of Miss Anna T. Jeanes, of Phila- delphia, dated April 22, 1907, the sum of $1,000,000 was placed in the hands of two trustees, Booker T. Washington and Hollis B. Frissell, to be known as the "Fund for Rudimentary Schools for Southern Negroes," the income of which is to be devoted "to the purpose of assisting in the Southern states com- munity, country and rural schools for the great class of negroes to whom the small rural and community schools are alone available." The two trustees under the authority of the bequest are authorized and directed to nominate and appoint a board of trustees. Such a board was organized in November, 1907, consisting of seventeen members and Dr. James H. Dillard, dean of the college of Tulane University, New Orleans, has been appointed presi- dent and administrative officer. Permanent offices are not yet chosen, but the president may be addressed at 2 Rector street, New York.
HENRY S. PRITCHETT,
President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teach' ing.
398 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER XVIII.
EDUCATIONAL IDEALS AND TENDENCIES IN THE SOUTH.
Early Ideals and Tendencies.
"HE early settlers and founders of the South- ern states understood something of the value of education and its relation to industrial, social, political and religious welfare. In all the colonies schools and colleges were early estab- lished. Many of these were endowed with lands and money. The first constitutions of some of these states contain clauses recognizing the importance of relig- ion and learning, and declaring that institutions of learning should forever be encouraged. The words liberty, learning, religion and morality ran easily together and were constantly on the lips of political and religious leaders. In the early legislatures of these states many bills were introduced looking to the establishment of general systems of education for all the people. In most or all of the states west of the mountains large areas of public lands were set apart for education, for the support of ele- mentary schools or the endowment of academies and colleges. William and Mary College in Virginia is one of the oldest in America. The universities of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Ten- nessee have all celebrated their centennial anniver- saries. In 1806 the General Assembly of Tennessee passed the first of a long succession of Acts, which resulted in the establishment and maintenance of one endowed or subsidized academy in each of sixty-
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two counties of this state before the beginning of the War Between the States.
Far-sighted statesmen dreamed of comprehensive plans for universal education and worked for them with an energy and persistence which, under favor- able conditions, would not have failed of greater success. Among the best known of these plans are those of Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia, and Archi- bald DeBow Murphey, of North Carolina. Their ideals are still the inspiration of those who are working for universal education in these and other Southern states, and their plans, with such modifica- tions as are made necessary by the changes of a century, are at last about to be realized by the chil- dren of their children's children.
When the Americans from these Southern states who had settled in Texas declared their indepen- dence of Mexico, one of the charges made against the parent state was that it did not foster education. When, during Jackson's administration, the surplus in the treasury of the United States was withdrawn from the National Bank and distributed among the states, several of the Southern states placed at least some portion of the same to the credit of their liter- ary funds. In the last two or three decades before the war good beginnings were made in a few of these states in real public school systems of the modern type. The first State Superintendent of Public Schools in North Carolina entered upon his office in 1853 and was reappointed from time to time until after the close of the war. He drove in his buggy and rode horseback from one end of the state to the other, preached a crusade of public education, in- duced the counties to levy taxes, established public schools, and organized them into a system. His work soon became known abroad and he was re-
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quested to address the legislatures of other Southern states on the subject of public education.
Many philanthropic and public-spirited men of this section gave liberally to the cause of educa- tion, especially for the poor. John McDonough, a native of Baltimore and an adopted citizen of New Orleans, who died in 1850, by his will, left his large fortune, which included, it is said, the largest landed estate belonging to any private individual in the world, to the mayors and aldermen of New Orleans and Baltimore and their successors in office forever "for the establishment and support of free schools in said cities and their respective suburbs, where the poor (and the poor only) of both sexes, of all classes and castes of color, shall have admittance, free of expense, for the purpose of being instructed in the knowledge of the Lord, and in reading, writ- ing, arithmetic, history, geography, etc., etc.." pro- vided the Bible should be used as the principal read- ing book and that singing should be taught in all the schools. I believe this is the largest fund ever yet given by a single individual for elementary edu- cation. Had it been managed according to the terms of McDonogh's will, it would by this time have amounted to scores of millions.
But in most of these states public funds were used to pay the tuition of the children of the poor, of those who were willing to take the pauper's oath that they were unable to pay for the education of their own children, and the "free" school was re- garded as a "charity." The rural life, the large plantation, the labor system and the predominant traditions of the South all tended to aristocracy and away from the democracy of the public school as we know it and as it was coming to be known in other sections of the country in these decades.
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The sons of rich planters and of professional men were taught by governesses, tutors, private teachers and in private academies and church schools. From these they went to some one of the Southern col- leges, to Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Columbia, or to one of the English or Scotch universities. The daughters of these planters and professional men attended private "boarding" schools, "finishing" schools, or one of the denominational "female colleges. ' '
The ideal of elementary and academic education was discipline. The higher education looked to the professions of law, medicine and the ministry, to participation in the affairs of state, or to a life of refined culture and elegant leisure. It was chiefly humanistic and literary. Pure mathematics, logic and metaphysics ranked next in importance. Little attention was given to the applications of mathe- matics except in the most primitive kinds of en- gineering. Laboratories for aid in teaching the physical sciences were few and meagerly equipped. There was little or no study of history and economics after the modern fashion. Prospective physicians or lawyers read in the offices of prominent practi- tioners. Most of those who wished more systematic instruction than could be obtained thus went North. The South had few colleges of medicine or law. The higher education of women consisted largely of "ac- complishments," the chief of which were music, art and a little French. The ideal of education was to prepare for leadership in political and social life, and right well was this purpose accomplished. To this fact the history of these states and of the Nation bears witness.
The zeal of various religious denominations mul- tiplied colleges and academies, both before and after
Vol. 10—26
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the war, and in 'the years of reconstruction the Masons, Odd Fellows, and other fraternal orders lent their aid in the establishment and maintenance of elementary and high schools, mostly of local patronage.
Educational ideals and practices are always de- termined by the larger social, political, religious and industrial ideals, and those in the South have been no exception to the rule. Aristocratic democracy, agriculture, feudalistic society, religious zeal and orthodoxy, resulted in private instruction for those who were able, charity schools of one kind or an- other for the children of the poor who desired it, private academies, church schools and state colleges and universities with small endowments and little help from public treasuries for the cultural educa- tion of the sons of the aristocracy of the large plan- tation and of professional life. These produced their legitimate results — on the one hand, a com- paratively large number of men and women with the training of the academy and the college ; on the other hand, total or approximate illiteracy of the masses. It should be remembered, however, that many ambi- tious boys of the middle classes and even many sons of the poor found their way to the academies, col- leges and universities, and gained from them all they were capable of giving. There have never been any fixed social barriers in the South. All lines of division have been flexible, uncertain and vanishing. Protestant Christianity, the zeal of the churches, and the well-nigh universal presence of the Bible have been important forces against total illiteracy, and the pulpit and the stump have infused some de- gree of moral and civic knowledge among the most ignorant. The active, self-reliant life and labors of the pioneer developed a shrewd, native intelligence
EDUCATIONAL IDEALS. 403
and a practical ability in dealing with the primitive conditions and solving the simple but comprehensive problems of the frontier. If education is adjust- ment, then many of these men with little of the learn- ing of the schools and slight acquaintance with books were well educated. They were strong, masterly, courageous, quick of perception, sound of judgment within the limits of their experience, and hopeful and ambitious of the future.
The negro had no part in the school education of the ante-bellum period. His training was found in his life of service. His education was obtained by direct contact with his master and the members of his master's family. Few negroes learned either to read or write.
Changes Wrought by the War.
Individual changes made necessary and possible by the war and its results have changed and are changing the life and ideals of the South in every particular. Racial characteristics, traditions, memo- ries and love for the old remain, but the spirit and form of social, political and economic life are new. Radical changes have come in the ideals of educa- tion and their tendencies are toward other ends.
War and reconstruction closed most of our col- leges and universities, impoverished our academies and church schools, sweeping away endowments and exhausting the accustomed sources of annual dona- tions, wasted our school funds and destroyed our beginnings of public education. Everywhere was chaos. The proportion of college men and women decreased and illiteracy among the masses increased still more rapily. The Federal census of 1870 and of 1880 showed a very large per cent, of illiteracy among native-born white people of this section, and
404 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
the condition revealed by the census of 1890 was only a little better. The great majority of freedmen were of course wholly illiterate.
The smoke had hardly lifted from the fields of battle before the churches began to establish new schools, reopen old ones, and collect meager funds for both. Fraternal organizations built academies and sometimes provided small endowments for them. Many officers of the defeated army became presidents of colleges, principals of academies, pro- fessors and instructors. The commanding general, Eobert E. Lee, idolized by his people and respected everywhere, declined many offers of remunerative positions and accepted the presidency of a poverty- stricken college in his own state, that he might de- vote the remainder of his days "to the training of men to do their duty in life." General Lee well un- derstood that the fortunes of the South could be rebuilt only by education adapted to the new condi- tions. He was an active member of the educational society of Virginia and did for it much valuable work. Many other chieftains followed his example. Widows and daughters of those who fell on the fields of battle opened schools for girls, some of which still exist. Though there were little system and coordination and though many schools without endowment or equipment and doing only elementary work were dubbed colleges and universities and granted the most pretentious degrees, still valuable service was done at a time when it was much needed. At least a portion of what was lacking in equipment and scholarship was supplied by the manhood, earnestness and persistence of the teachers. The ideal was manhood and the purpose preparation for immediate service under conditions requiring strength of character, endurance and power of rough
EDUCATIONAL IDEALS. 405
and ready adaptation. It was fortunate that the men and women on whom these duties and hardships devolved in these first decades of the new regime had just this type of education and training. Many of them had also the severe training of battle and of the hardships and sacrifices of war.
Schools for Negro Education.
Schools for the education of the negro were soon established in all parts of the South. Money for this purpose was given freely by the people of the North and many earnest men and women hastened South to teach in these schools. That much of this money and of these efforts was wasted for want of a better understanding of the situation and of a better knowledge of the negro and his needs, was not the fault of these men and women. It was their misfor- tune. Most similar efforts under similar conditions are more or less futile. Much of this work for negroes was planned and executed in wisdom. Prob- ably no more effective educational work of a mis- sionary nature has ever been done anywhere than that which General Armstrong began at Hampton. He clearly understood the situation, the needs of the negro and his limitations, as well as the part which he must play in the life of the South, where he lives. Gradually all have learned the lesson more or less perfectly. The good accomplished by the men and women sent from the North for the educa- tion of the negro in the South far outweighs the evils resulting from misunderstandings and mis- directed zeal.
The reconstruction governments in many of these states made some attempt to establish public schools in imitation of the schools of the North and East. Early in the seventies those states which had suf-
406 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
fered least from reconstruction made the beginnings which have grown into the present systems. Other states followed rapidly, and early in the next decade fair beginnings had been made in all. The new con- stitutions adopted in most of these states contained clauses in regard to universal education. But the states were poor and burdened with debt, property values were small, and revenue systems disorgan- ized. Many men of influence doubted the wisdom of universal education at public expense. Most doubted the wisdom of giving school education to the negro. Only a few believed it advisable to establish high schools at public expense at all. Thus the leg- islation of this decade and the next looked to the maintenance of schools of the most elementary grade, and the funds for the support of these were very meager. The terms were short, the attendance irregular, the supervision inadequate. In the cities and larger towns more liberal taxes were levied, more complete systems were provided, school terms were lengthened to seven, eight, nine or ten months. Schools were graded, grammar schools were estab- lished, and a few cities had high schools. But out- side of these few cities the burden of all education above the most elementary grades still rested on the private and denominational schools. On these, too, we depended for the education of teachers for the public schools Little attempt was made to provide the means of professional education and training for teachers. Indeed, it was not generally believed to be necessary or advisable. Thus professional in- efficiency of teachers was added to the other handi- caps of the public school system.
The real statesmen of the day understood this difficulty and would have remedied it could they have had the support of the smaller politicians, the
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masses of the people, and their representatives in city councils and state legislatures. In his message to the General Assembly of 1877, Governor Vance, of North Carolina, the great war governor, urged the establishment of normal schools for the education and training of both white and colored teachers. "It is impossible," he says, "to have an effective public school system without providing for the train- ing of teachers. The blind cannot lead the blind. Mere literary attainments are not sufficient to make their possessor a competent instructor. There must be added the ability to influence the young and to communicate knowledge. There must be a mastery of the best modes of conducting schools, of bringing out the latent possibilities, intellectual and moral, of the pupil's nature. In some rare cases these quali- ties are inborn, but generally it is an immense ad- vantage to teachers to be trained by those who have studied and mastered the methods which have been found by experience to be the most successful in dis- pelling ignorance and inculcating knowledge. The schools in which this training is given, called normal colleges or normal schools, have been found by expe- rience to be the most efficient agencies in raising up a body of teachers who infuse new life and vigor into the public schools. There is urgent need for one at least in North Carolina." But North Carolina waited fourteen years for its establishment.
In this same message Governor Vance pleads for the establishment of a normal school for negroes in words the wisdom of which may still be pondered by those who love these states and desire their welfare. "A school of similar character should be established for the education of colored teachers, the want of which is more deeply felt by the black race even than [by] the white. In addition to the fact that it is our
408 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
plain duty to make no discrimination in the matter of public education, I cannot too strongly urge upon you the importance of the consideration that what- ever of education we may be able to give the children of the state should be imparted under our own auspices and with a thorough North Carolina spirit. Many philosophical reasons can be given in support of this proposition." Governor Vance speaks at some length of the negro's eagerness for education and says: "This desire for education is an ex- tremely creditable one and should be gratified as far as our means will permit. In short, I regard it as an unmistakable policy to imbue these black peo- ple with a hearty North Carolina feeling and make them cease to look abroad for the aids to their prog- ress in civilization and the protection of their rights, as they have been taught to do, and teach them to look to their own state instead; to teach them that their welfare is indissolubly linked with ours."
I have quoted Governor Vance at length because his words are still worth careful consideration, and because, being a man of the people, in close touch and sympathy with the heart of the great masses, he understood them better even than they understood themselves, and caught their spirit while they were yet unconscious of it. It is ever thus that the man of the people voices their sentiment still unformed and becomes prophetic of the future, while those who live apart in aristocratic seclusion mistake their own prejudices for rising public opinion and streams of tendency.
The Peabody Normal College at Nashville and a good number of summer schools and teachers' insti- tutes, most of which received some help from the Peabody Fund, did much for the professional life and spirit of white teachers. Negro schools assisted
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by the Slater Fund and the Hand Fund and some- times helped by the state, did something for the negro teachers, but nothing was done by the states in any large or permanent way for the education and training of teachers until the last decade of the cen- tury. In this decade normal schools for the educa- tion of white teachers were established in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, Texas and Alabama. In the first and last of these beginnings had been made a little earlier, and there was a department of normal instruction in the Industrial Institute and College for Women at Columbus, established in 1885.
I believe there was no legal provision for sec- ondary or high school education in the public schools out of cities and special school districts before the beginning of the present century, except in Ten- nessee; and in this state these laws had little prac- tical result.
We still wandered in our forty years' wilderness of poverty and uncertainty. In most states debts were large and revenues were small. For the most primitive and necessary public improvements coun- ties and municipalities sold their bonds, bearing high rates of interest, through Northern banks. For roads, factories and mills money was borrowed abroad. The energies of the people, in the public councils and out, were directed toward the readjust- ment and reestablishment of political, social and industrial life and institutions. Public education lagged. According to the report of the United States Commissioner of Education for the year 1900-01, the average length of school term in the South Atlantic states, including Delaware, Maryland and District of Columbia with their long terms, was only 97 days ; in the South central division 91.6 days, while the
410 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
average number of days of schooling given for each child of school age, five to eighteen years, in the states usually classed as Southern, averaged from 30.2 in North Carolina to 50.3 in Tennessee and 54.2 in West Virginia. The average annual salary of teachers was a good deal less than the cost of feeding a prisoner in the county jail. The estimated value of all public school property in the thirteen Southern states was $40,000,000, and more than $9,000,000 of this was in Texas. The total public school revenue was $24,000,000, of which nearly $5,000,000 was in Texas. The average amount expended for each child of school age was about $3. There were still few or no public high schools outside of cities and towns. At least five states had no public normal schools and the appropriations to higher education were still very small. There were no compulsory school attendance laws in effect. The census of 1900 showed some progress in the reduction of illiteracy, but the figures were still very high, ranging, for native whites, from 6.1 per cent, in Texas and 8 per cent, in Mississippi to 19.5 per cent, in North Caro- lina; and for negroes from 32.3 per cent, in West Virginia and 38.2 per cent, in Texas to 57.4 per cent, in Alabama and 61.1 per cent, in Louisiana.
The present remarkable progress in public educa- tion in these states belongs almost wholly to the present decade and to the last six years, within which time more has been accomplished, if measured by appropriations, houses and equipment, and definite legislation, than in all the years that went before.
In a movement so extensive, so great and so new as this, it is difficult for one who is immersed in it to say definitely just what are the tendencies. Common ideals have hardly formulated themselves clearly
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enough for intelligent statement. There is danger of mistaking a passing personal impression for a general ideal, and an eddy or cross current for a permanent tendency; but so much at least seems to be clear : Education in the South is to be universal. The public school is to be our most democratic insti- tution. Through it equal opportunity is to be given to all, high and low, rich and poor, black and white, male and female, to develop their native powers, to prepare themselves for the duties and responsibili- ties of citizenship in a democratic state, to fit them- selves to find and hold their places in a mobile demo- cratic society, to gain the knowledge and skill neces- sary to self-preservation in the fierce competition of an industrial age and for participation in the world- wide cooperation for lifting all life to higher levels, to enable them to support themselves and those de- pendent on them, to add their part to the common- wealth, and to think for themselves in an age of almost absolute freedom of thought, even in things most sacred.
Only about a year ago, one little girl in a strag- gling village in the blue grass region of Middle Ten- nessee asked another, "Do you go to the pay school or the poor school?" And the curl of her lip ex- pressed the sentiment of her immediate associates in the adult world. There are still those who speak of public education as a "noble charity," but the num- ber grows smaller each year, both by translation and by conversion. The sentiment is a vanishing quan- tity and is rapidly becoming a negligible one in our body politic. The public school is no longer the "free" school or the "poor" school, but the instru- ment through which the democratic state is to per- form its highest function — the fullest, freest educa- tion of all its citizens for the most perfect living —
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a just burden on the public revenues, and under obligations to serve the highest and the richest as well as the poorest and the most humble. In some such terms may be expressed, more or less inade- quately, the ideal which is struggling into conscious- ness in the minds of all.
A few specific tendencies may be indicated with some certainty:
Longer School Terms.
We are no longer content with rural school terms of three or four months and urban school terms of five or six months. In fact, we have never been content with these short terms, and in many places the short terms of public schools have been length- ened by private subscriptions. The tendency of the urban communities is to terms of nine months, or thirty-six weeks, and most cities and towns of any size have attained this standard. It is not now easy for a city or town anywhere in the South to render an acceptable excuse for cutting its school term to six or seven months. In the rural districts the accepted standard seems to be eight months with a minimum of six months, though both are still ideal. In several states the law requires a minimum of six months, and in others special appropriations are made to assist in extending the terms of weak schools in poor communities to this length. The average length of term in rural schools has in- creased from 10 to 30 per cent, since 1900.
Public High Schools.
As already shown, at least some of the Southern states aided by public funds in the maintenance of academies or high schools in the first half of the last century, and most of the energies of private
EDUCATIONAL IDEALS. 413
individuals, religious societies and fraternal orders were spent in this direction. But the Act of the General Assembly of Tennessee of 1899, authorizing county courts to levy a special tax for high schools and appoint county boards of education for their control, was probably the first legislation looking to the maintenance of separate high schools as a part of the public school system of any state. At the beginning of this century there were very few rural public high schools in the South, probably less than a dozen, and the cities with well-equipped high schools of full four years were very few. To anyone who had suggested then the establishment of general systems of high schools, even in the meeting of any educational association in this section, the answer would have come, quick and decisive, that the time was not yet, that the people were not ready for it. But, in theory at least, the high school is now recognized everywhere as an essential and necessary part of the public school system. The Virginias, the Carolinas, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisi- ana, Texas and Tennessee all make special appro- priations out of the treasury of the state to aid and encourage the establishment and maintenance of public high schools, and most of them give aid in such way as to encourage counties and local com- munities to give from two to ten times as much as they receive from the state. A recent Act of the General Assembly of Kentucky requires the county boards of education to establish and maintain at least one public high school in each county. Under the stimulus of these state subsidies and constant and vigorous agitation, several hundred rural high schools have been opened within the last four years. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent annu- ally for maintenance, and millions have been
414 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
invested in buildings and equipment. In some states already there is an average of more than one rural high school to a county and, at the present rate of increase, this will soon be true of all these states. In the meantime city high schools have been housed in separate buildings, their courses of study have been lengthened and enriched, their equipment, laboratories and libraries have been enlarged. Few of the rural high schools are yet fully developed, but the purpose seems to be to make of them real high schools. The state subsidies and state super- vision will help to this end. This whole movement has been stimulated and given intelligent guidance by the appointment of high school inspectors and professors of secondary education in the state uni- versities, by the aid of the General Education Board.
As a result of this movement inefficient private and denominational academies, high schools and colleges are disappearing, the weaker ones by death and disintegration, the stronger ones by further strengthening themselves to do their legitimate work under the new conditions.
Better Support of State Colleges and Universities.
There is no state in this section that does not appropriate to institutions of higher learning this year more than twice as much as it appropriated six years ago, and some appropriate from three to four times as much. These appropriations go to state universities, agricultural and mechanical col- leges, schools of technology and colleges for women. In some states these exist as separate institutions, while in others they are combined in one. With the more liberal support, more is required of these institution and most of them are rapidly making
EDUCATIONAL IDEALS. 415
the transition from the old-time aristocratic institu- tions for the literary education and polite culture of the few to modern democratic workshop for the advancement of all the interests of the state and for fitting men and women for intelligent and effective service in all departments of life. To this end courses of study have been multiplied and freedom of election extended. Much money has been spent on labora- tories and libraries. The tendency is toward the elimination of tuition fees and the reduction of necessary expenses to the lowest possible minimum, so that none may be excluded because of unneces- sary expense. In some states these colleges and universities are now an integral part of the free school system.
Correlation and Definite Standards.
As a result of this rapid and unequal development and the absence of competent supervision and plan- ning, there have been much overlapping, inefficiency and waste of energy and means. There is a grow- ing sense of need of system and fixed and recognized standards. Most of the state colleges and many of the denominational colleges have dropped their preparatory departments. Within the last twelve months the colleges and universities in the Associa- tion of Southern Colleges and Preparatory Schools have agreed to adopt the fourteen Carnegie units as the minimum requirement for admission to their literary and engineering departments. This is forcing the high schools to adopt courses of full four years, which, in turn, will pull up the elemen- tary and grammar schools. In Tennessee, where the "secondary" schools, provided by an Act of the General Assembly of 1891, and the county high schools, provided by an Act of 1899, overlap, the
416 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
present tendency is to abolish the "secondary" schools, a kind of unorganized, low-grade high schools, or to absorb them into the elementary schools on the one side and the high schools on the other. This illustrates a universal tendency.
From the beginning, the city and town schools have been graded. In recent years there has been an attempt to grade rural schools and to establish some order in their studies. This is leading to con- solidation of small schools with one teacher and few children into larger schools of two or more teachers. In some instances transportation is pro- vided at public cost, and this tendency will increase. In several states the state superintendent of public instruction and the state board of education have recently published carefully prepared courses of study, with detailed suggestions as to their use.
Higher Standard of Qualification for Teachers.
There has been and is still great loss through inefficient teachers. The salaries have not been sufficient to keep men and women of ability in the schoolroom. Without public high schools, normal training schools, and adequate departments of edu- cation in colleges and universities and with meager attendance in all departments of these last, the supply of teachers with professional training, even with adequate academic education, has by no means been equal to the demand. Less than twenty per cent, of the teachers in the elementary schools of these states have had a good modern high school education, and less than five per cent, have had any adequate professional training. In the high schools and academies all too few have had the broad and liberal training of a first-class college, and fewer still have had thorough training in special subjects,
EDUCATIONAL IDEALS. 417
or know anything of the history, principles and methods of education. But ideals have changed and practice is changing. The feeling of the need for better teachers in elementary schools has been an important factor in creating a demand for public high schools. The acceptance of education as the means by which the state provides for itself better citizens and assures the development of its sources of material wealth has brought us to regard teach- ing as a profession requiring special training. This has led to the establishment of normal schools, the appropriations for the support of which are increas- ing rapidly from year to year. One now hears the unchallenged statement that all teachers should have at least a good high school education and a good amount of professional training. There is a similar demand for high school teachers with broad education and special preparation, including some knowledge of the history of education and methods of teaching. Colleges and state universities are beginning to respond to this demand with more fully equipped departments of education.
Adaptation of the Education of the Schools to Life.
In OUT first attempts at universal education we made the usual mistake of supposing the education of the schools to be something foreign in its nature, with little direct relation to the everyday life and interests of the masses of the people, the purpose of which is to lift children out of this life into a life more or less like that of the professional and leisure classes for whom the schools of former times existed and which we have fancied was in some way very superior to the life of the farmer, the mechanic and the tradesman. Hence we have put undue emphasis on language, literature, mathematics, and
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418 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH
certain traditional subjects supposed to have special value for culture. Our schools have been altogether too bookish. There is a growing opinion that edu- cation should take hold on the life the people live, that it should help both to live and to make a living. We are also learning that native ability is a relative term. The child who is accounted dull from the standard of the requirements of the traditional courses of study may be among the best in other subjects just as valuable from the newer standpoint. Everywhere there is an attempt to adapt the schools and the courses of study to the newer ideas, and we shall finally succeed, both by enriching, differ- entiating and simplifying the courses of study in the ordinary elementary and high schools, as we have done already in the colleges and universities, and by establishing separate agricultural, industrial and commercial schools The first tendency is seen in the introduction of nature study, manual train- ing, domestic science, agriculture, elementary phys- ics, chemistry and biology, with laboratory work, and other similar subjects in the common schools, and in the normal schools for the training of teach- ers. The last is seen in the establishment of the agricultural schools in Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, and other states, and in the establishment of indus- trial high schools in the cities, as in Columbus. Possibly the best illustration of this tendency to adapt the schools to life is seen in the schools for negroes at Hampton and Tuskegee.
Negro Education.
Whatever may have been the doubts of the past, most thoughtful people in the South are now agreed that the negro must be educated for morality, citi- zenship and industry. The problem of the raceb
EDUCATIONAL IDEALS. 419
is difficult enough, but few believe that ignorance, inefficiency and helplessness on the part of either race can make any valuable contribution toward its solution. School funds are divided between the races with a fair degree of justice, and school officers and professional educators are at last begin- ning to study dispassionately the problem of adap- tation of education to the racial characteristics and to the social and industrial conditions and needs of the negro. At the Lexington meeting of the South- ern Educational Association in December, 1907, resolutions were adpoted endorsing "the accepted policy of the states of the South in providing for the education of the children and youth of the negro race," and asking that education in elementary branches shall be made thorough and that it shall include specific instruction in hygiene and home san- itation; that in secondary education emphasis shall be placed on agriculture and industrial occupations, including domestic science, home economics and training in the care of the sick ; that negro teachers shall be provided for negro schools; that normal schools and normal institutes for negroes shall have white teachers to as large an extent as possible; that all negro schools shall have closer supervision by state, county and city departments of education; that negro schools shall be provided with suitable buildings, comfortable seatings, and sanitary condi- tions ; that courses of study shall be adapted to the needs of the race; that there shall be an equitable division of school funds between the races; that all negro children shall have a fair opportunity to get at least a good elementary education at public cost ; and that there may be patience, tolerance and jus- tice in the administration of educational laws and policies applying to negroes. These resolutions, I
420 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OP THE SOUTH.
believe, voice the sentiment of the majority of the white people who are forming the policy of these states. At the Atlanta meeting of the Southern Educational Association in December, 1908, the entire program of one morning was given to a dis- cussion of this subject, and it proved the most vitally interesting of the entire meeting. At the close of the session a resolution was unanimously adopted expressing the gratitude of the people of the South to the men and women from other sec- tions who, by gifts of money and personal self- sacrifice, have helped the South to educate this backward and dependent race.
Education of Women.
From the beginning coeducation of the sexes in the elementary schools and in most of the local private high schools has been common, and the South was early interested in the higher education of women One of the oldest academies for women in America is in the South, and one of our colleges for women claims to be the oldest college for women in the world conferring academic degrees. More than fifty of the hundred colleges for women which now exist in this section were founded before the war. Most of our state universities and denom- inational colleges are coeducational, and at least four of these states make large appropriations for the education of women in separate institutions, larger than is made by any state in any other part of the Union It is now accepted, in theory at least, that girls and women shall have as good opportuni- ties for education as men, and that it is as much the duty of the state to pay for the one as for the other. In the separate state colleges for women more or less successful efforts are made to adapt the education
EDUCATIONAL IDEALS. 421
of women to their needs and to fit them to play their part in our social economy, according to the accepted ideas of the people of this section. In the coedu- cational schools it is coming to be understood that the opportunities for women shall be equal to, not the same as, those of men ; and one may confidently expect in the near future an addition of equipment, a differentiation of courses, and a modification and adjustment of studies that will make this possible. It is probable that we may solve here the problem of the higher education of women as it has not been solved elsewhere.
Compulsory School Attendance.
Southern people hold more tenaciously than people of other sections of the country to the doc- trines of individual and family rights, and these are interpreted in such way as to make them very slow to admit the policy of compulsory school attendance, despite the evident need of the force of law to reduce our fearful percentage of illiteracy, the highest in America and higher than in any coun- tries in Europe except Spain, Portugal, southern Italy, Russia, Greece, Turkey and the Balkan states. But we are coming to a better understanding of the limitations of individual and parental rights. We are beginning to believe that children have rights which parents must be made to respect; that no parent has the right to rob his child of the oppor- tunities for elementary education provided by the state, or to commit treason against the state by forc- ing upon it uneducated, untrained, helpless and vicious citizens. It is not undemocratic even to protect children against their own ignorance of their welfare before they arrive at years of discretion. There is now a strong and rapidly increasing senti-
422 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
ment for compulsory school attendance at least through the years of the elementary school. Ken- tucky and Arkansas have compulsory school attend- ance laws. Virginia and North Carolina have such laws, but leave it to the local communities to put them into operation. One-third of the counties of Ten- nessee have operated under compulsory school attendance laws since the first of July, 1909. This marks the beginning of the end of illiteracy in the South, for other states will certainly follow this good example.
Improvement of Schoolhouses and Grounds.
Seven years ago was begun in North Carolina a movement which has now extended to all the South- ern states and has become the most extensive volun- teer movement in the history of the world for the improvement of schoolhouses and grounds. It has enlisted the cooperation of teachers, school officials, women in and out of women's clubs, philanthropists and men of affairs. State, county and school districts are organized into school improvement leagues, cities have their mothers' clubs and other school improvement organizations. There is an interstate organization with its annual meeting. The Southern Education Board and the Conference for Education in the South, which have done so much for the advancement of public education in this sec- tion, have fostered the movement. Large sums of money have been raised by local subscriptions. Each state has one or more paid workers, women of good native ability, of education and culture, who give their entire time to this work and meet in con- ference once or more each year for an exchange of ideas and a discussion of plans. Possibly the pur- pose of the movement is best expressed by their
EDUCATIONAL IDEALS. 423
working motto: "Health, Comfort, Beauty and Attractiveness." In most of the states this move- ment has already been closely associated with the state department of education, and it will prob- ably finally become in each state an integral part of this department. Its influence for higher ideals and better living, both in the schoolroom and in the home, is greater than can be estimated. It is another means by which we are trying to make the school take hold on life.
Unity and Economy.
Closely akin to the tendency toward correlation and the adoption of definite standards is the ten- dency toward unifying the entire public school sys- tem and a correlation of all the educational forces of the state, whether supported by public funds or otherwise; for indeed all these schools are public institutions in the higher sense. The unity and cor- relation of the various state institutions of higher learning in Florida some years ago, the recent pas- sage of the General Education Bill in Tennessee, by which all appropriations to education are made in one Act, all schools made free and all schools except the university put under the direct control of the state board of education, are examples of this tendency. So also are the plans being worked out by the Virginia Education Commission for the correlation of the schools of that state, and the work of the Kentucky Education Commission for the readjustment of the entire school system. The same tendency is manifest in the sections of the new con- stitution of Virginia which relate to public schools, and in the recent revision of the machinery for the management of the schools in Kentucky, Tennessee and other states, substituting a system of county
424 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
and division boards of education for the old system, or non-system, of district directors. Still another manifestation of this tendency is found in the move- ment in all these states for more competent super- vision and more economic professional and busi- ness direction in state, county and city. As a result of this phase of the movement the offices of state, county and city superintendent are being further removed from the influence of partisan and fac- tional politics, salaries are being increased, the standards of qualification for their incumbents are being raised and public sentiment and legal enact- ment are requiring that they shall devote their time to the duties of their office as they have not done in the past. The last phase of this tendency is now more fully developed in Louisiana than elsewhere.
Such seem to be some of the more important tendencies which begin to make themselves felt in our educational life. They augur well for the future of this section.
And with this statement this chapter might end but for the fact that it is due ourselves and the rest of the world that some statement should be made of the difficulties under which progress thus far has been made. It will give us hope and courage and our friends and critics patience while we struggle upward and slowly bring to completion that which we have begun with earnestness of purpose but not without much fear and hesitation.
Large Rural Population.
From the first the people of the South have lived in the country. There have been few towns and, until very recently, no large cities. We have seen how the large plantation and sparse population and their accompanying results prevented the establish-
EDUCATIONAL IDEALS. 425
ment of public schools before the war. Four-fifths of the people still live in the country, and are quite evenly distributed instead of being gathered to- gether in farm villages and thickly populated com- munities with large tracts of uninhabited territory between, as is the case in some other states and countries. The maintenance of efficient public schools in such rural states and countries is always both more difficult and more costly than in states and countries with a large urban population or in rural states in which the population is more unevenly distributed.
Two Distinct Races.
For school purposes our territory is twice as large as it appears on the map, and the population is much more sparse than the total statistics would indicate; for the school population is composed of two races, which, for the good of both alike, must be educated in separate schools. Again, one of these races has no educational history. Those of the present generation who have learned to read, write and count are practically the only members of their race who have ever had any of the education of the schools. The whole people of the South emerged from the long years of war and reconstruction with a higher percentage of illiteracy and a greater lack of higher education than any generation of these people had had since the settlement of the territory out of which these states were formed. Most of their schools and means of education had been destroyed by the foreign foe or closed for lack of funds. We had to begin at the bottom.
Poverty.
This beginning had to be made in poverty. While the taxable wealth of other states was doubling and
426 EDUCATIONAL LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
doubling again under the impetus of modern inven- tion, worldwide commerce and newly discovered powers of organization and combination, the people of the South through thirty years were slowly and painfully accumulating the wealth which had been destroyed, attempting to reach again the total which they had possessed in 1860. At the end of these slow-moving and toilsome years, although the total wealth had been regained, the per capita wealth was still less than it had been thirty years before. Homes had been burned, roads and bridges de- stroyed, fields laid waste, political, social and indus- trial systems swept away, burdens of debt had been heaped up with little or no return for the bonds that had been issued. Confederate bonds bought by Southern men of means to furnish war expenses were never redeemed. Federal bonds bought by Northern men of means at less than half their face value paid their interest regularly and the market value increased to their par value and more. Men who should have redeemed the fortunes of the South lay dead on the battlefields or had returned wounded and disabled. There was a generation of widows and orphans. Compulsory school attendance for these orphan children would have been cruelty, even had there been schools for them to attend or the means to support such schools. While the North and West were filling up with immigrants of the best races and peoples of Europe, few or none came to these war-blighted, poverty-stricken states to take the place of the dead and wounded and do the work needed for the development of our resources. Negroes, who, under intelligent if sometimes harsh control, had done much of the wealth-producing labor of this section in earlier decades of the cen- tury, had not yet learned that freedom and labor
EDUCATIONAL IDEALS. 427
are not necessarily mutually excluding ideas. With- out intelligent direction, the irregular labor they were willing to perform was not profitable. Through all these years the people of these states have paid out of their poverty a golden stream of revenue to be distributed as pensions among the ex-Federal soldiers, disabled or not, in the East, North and West. But no pensions from anywhere came to the ex-Confederates to relieve their burdens, pay their school taxes or help them feed and clothe their chil- dren while they sent them to school. The small funds derived from taxes were divided between the schools for the children of the two races, but were paid by the men and women of only one race. In these states the proportion of children of school age to men twenty-one years old and over is about 50 per cent, greater than the average of the rest of the country, and twice as great as in some states of the East and far Northwest. Thus the proportion of taxable wealth to school population is even less than the statistics of wealth on the basis of total population would indicate. A given number of wealth-producing adult males must feed, clothe, shelter and provide schools for from 50 to 100 per cent, more children than a like number of wealth- producing males in other sections of the country.
Under these difficulties our progress has been slower than it might have been without them. Our absolute attainments are yet small and there is still much to do. But, after all, ' i the relation of a people to education is to be measured not so much by that which they have absolutely accomplished as by the rate of progress which they are making," and the way they are going.
PHILANDER P. CLAXTON,
Professor of Education, University of Tennessee.
PART IV
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER I.
DENOMINATIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT.
5>
iHEEE are several features peculiar to the South which should be noted in any description of its religious life. First it is preeminently a rural section, with only a few great cities. Moreover, these are on the borders, Baltimore near the Northern line, St. Louis near the "Western line and New Orleans in the extreme South. Of course, scattered throughout the territory of the South are many growthful towns as well. Still, the South is not dominated as are other sections of the country by great cities. This feature has a very influential bearing on the prevailing type of religion. This type is fixed to a very large extent by the country-side rather than by the city or town, and for this reason it is dis- tinctly evangelical.
The South knows relatively little, and is disturbed scarcely at all, by the great theological controversies which are current elsewhere. Of course, an edu- cated ministry and an intelligent membership cannot
428
DENOMINATIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT. 429
be wholly unacquainted with the theological unrest of the age or entirely unaffected by it. At the same time, to an extent which is quite remarkable, the old doctrines are beloved and the old methods prevail.
Another feature of the situation in the South which must always be borne in mind in discussing any aspect of its life is the presence of a vast num- ber of negroes. This greatly complicates the relig- ious situation. The negroes are a notably religious people, though their religious life and activity are predominantly emotional rather than ethical. One of the tremendous problems confronting the South is that of bringing these vast multitudes of negroes into a larger and more intelligent conception of Christianity. Hence, in a sketch of this sort, atten- tion is first directed to the religious work among the negroes.
The great majority of the negroes are in either the Baptist or Methodist churches, though the Pres- byterians, Episcopalians and Roman Catholics also claim quite a respectable following among them. It is not possible to give statistical statements suffi- ciently accurate to be of real value concerning the strength of the various negro religious bodies. The most numerous of these bodies is probably the Bap- tist. According to the best figures obtainable, the negro Baptists have in the South 18,307 organized churches, 17,088 ordained ministers, 2,330,535 mem- bers, $19,000,000 worth of church property and 102 schools and colleges for the industrial and higher education. They are organized into a National Convention, with mission and publication boards. They opened missions in West Africa in 1883, in South Africa in 1894, in British Central Africa in 1899, in South America in 1899, in the West Indies in 1900, and in Russia in 1906.
1
430 EELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
In their mission fields they have 135 American native missionaries and a church membership of 8,074. They have also a printing plant in Nashville which has grown to be the largest negro business enterprise in the country.
Of the negro Methodists it has been found imprac- ticable to gather so many details. They are divided into several bodies and, like their Baptist brethren, are rapidly developing the missionary spirit. They number in the South about 1,500,000.
There are three forces co-acting to bring about a better religious condition among the negroes. Sev- eral missionary organizations of the North own and manage schools for their benefit and support in whole or in part missionaries among them ; the white religious bodies of the South, always inter- ested in their religious welfare, have recently begun to show new interest and new zeal in this behalf, and the negro organizations and agencies themselves have seemed within the past few years to have new vitality and power. The education of their min- istry is of first importance, and to train so large a number of ministers as are necessary for them must necessarily take many years, but progress in this direction is gratifying and promising.
Numerical Strength and Work of the Various Religious Bodies.
It has been found almost impracticable to get exact statements concerning the numerical strength and the institutional life of all the great white relig- ious denominations of the South. The Episco- palians, the Roman Catholics, the Lutherans and the Disciples of Christ all act through organizations that are general to the entire country. Moreover, it is true of all the religious bodies represented in the South that there is an incalculable amount of local
DENOMINATIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT. 431
missionary, educational and charitable work done that is never reported except to local organizations, and much of it never reported at all. It would be manifestly impracticable to investigate these hun- dreds of documents, and we should not find room, in any event, to print the results. We shall have to content ourselves, therefore, with general facts and figures.
The Eoman Catholics are found mostly in the cities. They have, of course, a compact and power- ful organization, and are active, zealous and influen- tial. Wherever they are established they take great interest in charitable enterprises and conduct admir- able parochial schools, hospitals, homes for the aged and poor, and other similar institutions.
The Episcopalians, also, are strongest in the cities and towns, though they have considerable repre- sentation in the country districts. They are divided into twenty-four dioceses, with 131,365 communi- cants. Their general missionary work is done through their Foreign and Domestic Board, with headquarters at New York. They give a generous support to this work, but as their gifts are merged with those from all sections of the country, it is not practicable to indicate the amounts. The Episco- palians of the South give a great deal of attention to educational and charitable work. They have a theological seminary at Alexandria, Va., and one at Sewanee, Tenn.
The Disciples of Christ conduct all their general missionary work through a convention that covers the entire country. They number in the South 572,769, who are gathered into 4,734 churches. They have educational institutions in North Carolina, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. They are a vigorous and growing people.
432 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
The Presbyterians in the South are organized under the name of The Presbyterian Church in the United States. They have 3,277 churches, with 286,733 communicants. Their total gifts for the year ending March 31, 1908, were $3,507,075. Not counting their schools among the negroes or in foreign lands, there are ninety-two institutions of learning connected with the church. The head- quarters of their publication work are in Richmond, Va., their Foreign Mission Committee is located in Nashville, Tenn., their Home Mission Committee is in Atlanta, Ga., and their Committee on Education and Belief is located in Louisville, Ky. This church maintains five theological seminaries, one in Rich- mond, Va., one in Columbia, S. C., one at Clarks- ville, Tenn., one at Austin, Texas, and one in Louis- ville, Ky. Its religious work is thoroughly organ- ized, its ministers well educated, and in the past thirty-eight years it has quite trebled its member- ship.
The white Baptists of the South number 2,015,080, and these are gathered into 21,266 churches. Their gifts to missions for the year ending May 1, 1908, amounted to $1,134,695, while they contributed for all purposes $7,863,416. There were added during the same year by baptism 129,152. The total value of their church property is $30,861,438. They are organized into district associations, state conven- tions or associations and the Southern Baptist Con- vention. None of these bodies has any ecclesiastical authority or standing. All of them are composed of representatives of the churches, and are organized for promotion of missions, education and benevo- lence. In every state in the South the Baptists have schools and colleges. In recent years they have laid great stress on the matter of denominational educa-
DENOMINATIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT. 433
tion, raising large sums of money for the equipment and endowment of their schools. Their general mis- sionary work is conducted through the Southern Baptist Convention, and is divided into foreign mis- sions, with the board in charge located at Richmond, Va. ; home missions, with the board in charge at Atlanta, Ga. ; Sunday schools and publications, with the board in charge located at Nashville, Tenn. They have one theological seminary, which is located at Louisville, Ky., and is the most largely attended in the entire country; recently, also, a theological seminary has been organized at Waco, Texas.
The Southern Methodists number 1,761,669. These are gathered into 5,642 "pastoral charges." There are 6,334 traveling preachers and 4,877 local preachers. They are organized into one General Conference, which meets triennially, and forty-seven Annual Conferences. -There are ten bishops of this church. The net gain in the membership of Southern Methodists for 1908 was 52,588. The net gain in Sunday school scholars for the same period was 65,393. For 1908 the total gifts to foreign missions were $578,003, and to domestic or home missions $762,892. Nashville, Tenn., is headquarters for Southern Methodism. Here they have a great pub- lishing house. Their Board of Missions, and their Board of Education are also located here. They have on the foreign field 191 missionaries. Connected with the Church are 168 educational institutions. There are 15,815 church edifices, valued at $35,981,- 199. Their young people are organized into the Epworth League. This Church is characterized especially by the activity of its women. They gave during 1908 more than half of all that was con- tributed to foreign and domestic missions. For min- isterial support Southern Methodists gave in 1908
Vol. 10—28
434 EELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
$4,166,028, an average of $2.50 per member. This great Church is notably active, zealous and influen- tial, and is constantly growing.
The Lutherans are not numerous in the South. It is estimated that they number about 50,000 south of the Potomac. Some of them belong to Northern synods, but the majority are members of the United Synod of the South. This latter synod maintains a theological seminary at Charleston, S. C., and, at other points, three colleges for young men, and three for young women. At all of these institutions there are about 1,000 students. This synod maintains a number of missions in the cities and larger towns. The last decade has been remarkable for the devel- opment of the spirit of benevolence. The Lutherans have a college and a theological seminary for negroes at Greensboro, N. C., and maintain missions among negroes in Virginia, North Carolina and Louisiana. The Lutheran Church in the South is thoroughly evangelical. Interest among them in Christian education is constantly growing.
These are rough outline sketches of the largest Christian bodies in the South. In addition to these, however, there are numerous smaller denomina- tions, all of them prosperous and vigorous. The Jews are represented in all the large cities and towns. In many of these they have imposing houses of worship, and they care for the religious interests of their own race with intelligence and assiduity. They are among the most highly esteemed and use- ful citizens, and are sincerely interested in all public charitable work.
Special Features of the Religious Life of the South,
The whole situation in the South is eminently favorable for religious growth. In the main the
DENOMINATIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT. 435
population is singularly homogeneous, Only here and there does foreign immigration make itself seriously felt. While this section has its own prob- lems, difficult to be sure, it is happily freed from some problems which confront other sections of our country. The tide of materialism, while it is rising in the South, has not yet overwhelmed it. The great mass of the people retain the simple manners and continue to observe the religious usages of their fathers. They are profoundly interested in their churches and denominational enterprises, and respond quickly and surely to all appeals to their religious instincts and beliefs.
A notable feature of recent religious life in the South has been the increased attention to the exter- nals of worship. Far more care and pride are taken in the erection and equipment of houses of worship. This is true not only of the growing cities and ambi- tious towns, but of the country-side as well. The increasing material prosperity of the South is reflected in almost numberless new houses of wor- ship built within the past few years. More attention is given also to the education of the ministry. All the religious denominations have evidently reached the conclusion that a full educational equipment is necessary for the ministry of to-day. The churches are in an organized way rallying to the support of colleges for men and women, and the pulpits are becoming worthy forums from which the educa- tional needs, opportunities and responsibilities of the hour are frequently and constantly discussed.
Organized Benevolence.
In the older and simpler civilization of the South there was little in the way of organized benevolence. Private charity did whatever was necessary for the
436 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
suffering. But with the social changes that have come since the great war the necessity for institu- tions and agencies to do the work individuals could no longer do so well has been made plain. Hence, to the appeal of the unfortunate the churches have responded, and orphanages, hospitals, asylums, societies of various kinds, have multiplied until they are practically numberless. Nothing in the recent history of the South is more remarkable than this development.
The Missionary Spirit.
In the meantime the missionary spirit has grown notably. Money has flowed freely into the treas- uries of mission boards for the support of great missions in other lands. This work has claimed and received year by year increasing evidences of appre- ciation and interest.
On the whole, then, the religious life of the South, marked in her past history by its simplicity, and still, compared with other more rapidly changing sections, retaining this characteristic, is neverthe- less constantly adapting itself to new conditions. The past is safe, the present affords every reason for gratification, and the prospect is bright.
E. H. PITT,
Editor of the Religious Herald, Eichmond, Va.
ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN VIRGINIA. 437
CHAPTEE II. THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN VIRGINIA.
The First Church Established at Jamestown.
'N THE left bank of the James River, about midway between Richmond and Hampton Roads, the passing traveler's eye is attracted by a mined ivy-clad tower standing in the midst of a number of moss-covered tombstones. This spot should be a sacred shrine to every patri- otic AJtnerican, for here was planted in the year 1607, a vine of civilization and liberty and religion which has spread over this whole land. The begin- nings of Anglo-Saxon dominion on this western continent were here. The seed plot of representa- tive free government in America was here. The earliest spring and source of American Christianity was here. Here the English Bible was first given speech on American soil — the edition of 1606, known as the Bishop's Bible. Here the English Prayer Book first came into permanent use in this western world.
On May 13, 1607, three little English ships, after a long and stormy voyage, came to anchor opposite to what was to be known as Jamestown. It was not a goodly or a gallant expedition to look upon. Little here of pomp and circumstance; little to betoken power, or to foretoken glory. But to the eye of History to-day those little cockle-shells car- ried the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race in this western hemisphere. They brought with them the seed of English civilization and English free insti- tutions for a new sowing, whose harvest was to be
438 KELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
the great Republic of the west. They brought also the seed of the Anglo-Saxon church, which, planted here in 1607, has yielded as its harvest the Prot- estant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.
On the edge of this unbroken and unexplored wilderness, they builded their cabins, and toiled and battled and starved* that in after years there might be an English-speaking people dominant in the western hemisphere — that English, not Spanish or French, civilization might take root and overspread the land; that the free spirit of English liberty might at length be supreme in America. When we remember all that Spanish civilization stood for — its absolutism, its obscurantism, its cruelty, its repres- sion of liberty — we must indeed thank God that it did not dominate the settlement of America.
Religious Impulse of the Colony.
The commercial spirit is quite insufficient to explain this Virginia settlement; we must look deeper — and then we find that we have here the working out of Sir Philip Sidney's scheme to "check the dangerous and increasing power of Spain and Borne in the new world by planting English Prot- estant settlements there, which would increase until they extended from ocean to ocean.'5 Historical investigation has established the fact that the col- ony had a disinctly religious impulse and a mission- ary motive. It was a Church of England enterprise — churchmen organized the colony ; churchmen were its patrons and supporters. With the ever honor- able name of the Rev. Richard Hakluyt, Preben- dary of Westminster, must be associated the names of the Dean of Westminster, the Archbishop of
* During the first nineteen years 6,040 persons died out of a population of 7,289.
ESTABLISHED CHUECH IN VIRGINIA. 439
Canterbury, three other bishops and seven clergy- men of lesser rank, all of which are found in one or other of the early charters. Of 325 who signed the Charter of 1612, twenty-five were peers of the realm, one hundred and eleven knights, sixty-six squires and thirty gentlemen.
The first act of the weather-beaten colonists upon landing on the soil of the new world was to worship Almighty God according to the rites of the Church of England. There was, of course, no church in which to hold their services, but they hung an old sail to three or four trees "to shadow them from i;he sunne," and there they gathered, 105 souls all told, and gave thanks to God for their escape from the perils of their weary voyage, that valiant saint, the Eev. Eobert Hunt, conducting the service. That was the first Protestant church on American soil. Its "walls were rales of wood," its seats "unhewed trees"; its "pulpit a bar of wood nailed to neigh- boring trees" — a rude church indeed, but as we see it now, no cathedral could be more glorious, for it sheltered beneath that old torn sail the cradle of Anglo-Saxon dominion and of Anglo-Saxon faith and polity of this western hemisphere. The cus- tom in the colony was to have "daily common prayer, morning and evening, every Sunday two sermons, and every three months the holy commun- ion," during the lifetime of the Eev. Robert Hunt.*
* Hunt's successor was the Rev. Richard Buck, a graduate of Oxford. Other ministers of the colony whose names have come down to us were Poole, Glover, Alexander Whitaker and William Wickham. These early ministers of the colony were men of high character and of sincere devotion. Glover was advanced in years and in easy circumstances when his zeal brought him to Virginia. Whitaker left station, wealth and the sure prospect of preferment. He won by his zeal the title of "Apostle of the Indians." It was he who converted and baptized Pocahontas.
As time went on the high character of the clergy in the colony suffered eclipse ; and the fact that there was no bishop over this Episcopal Church nearer than London tended to the great disadvantage of the church. The colony was, however, divided into parishes early In its history. The lines of about fifty parishes were established in Eastern Virginia, and substan- tial churches erected, of which St. Luke's, Isle of Wight county (built in 1632), survives to testify to the dignified and impressive architecture
440 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
After the death of Mr. Hunt, the services were kept up by lay readers — "our prayers daily, with an homily on Sundays" — for two or three years until the next clergyman arrived. In 1611, we find the habits of the colony thus described: "They work from six o 'clock in the morning untill ten, and from two in the afternoon until four, at both which times they are provided with spirituall and corporal reliefe. First they enter the church and make their prayers unto God; next they return to their houses and receive their proportion of food."
The Virginians' Services to New England.
Let it be noted that these Virginia colonists were the first to explore the New England coast. Under the leadership of that remarkable man, Capt. John Smith, they mapped its harbors and its fishing grounds, and so blazed the path for the Pilgrims and Puritans. Nor is this all. It is a fact seldom noticed that the Church of England colony in Vir- ginia saved the New England coast from the grasp of France through the vigorous action of Captain Argall, who drove the French from the colony which they had established on Mount Desert, Maine.f It may also be recalled that the Leyden pilgrims in 1620 obtained their patent for their settlement in New England (then called "North Virginia") from the London Company, which was of course a Church of England organization.
of the period. "The Parish Vestries were made the guardians of public morals, the custodians of dependent orphans and the overseers of the poor." The vestrymen were the leading men of the colony.
* Mention may here be made of the fact that the colony of 1607 con- sisted of men only. The first women to come over (in the autumn of 1608) were Mrs. Forrest and her maid, Ann Burras.
t The notion that the colonization of America had its rise among non-conformists, stimulated by the religious discussions in England, is erroneous. At the close of the Sixteenth century the idea of colonization was in fact "the peculiar possession of the men of the Church of England." The Leyden pilgrims were stimulated by the example of church colonies undertaken both for New England and for Virginia.
ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN VIRGINIA. 441
The Church's Contributions to American Civil Liberty.
In endeavoring to trace the contribution of this Anglo-Saxon church to the making of the American Eepublic, let it be first observed that the germs of liberty and of representative civil government are to be found in the popular charters and other legal instruments of The London Company for Virginia, which were drafted by Sir Edwin Sandys, a ferv- ent friend of liberty and a statesman of the "great- est parts and knowledge in England, assisted by other lawyers and politicians among the progressive thinkers of that transition period." (See charters of 1609 and 1612.) It is here, says Alexander Brown, that we must look for the "germ which gradually developed into a popular government in America, — the Genesis of the United States." It was to the chartered rights here recognized — "the inalienable rights of freeborn Englishmen" — that our forefathers appealed at the beginning of the war for independence. But the Magna Charta of Virginia was that issued on Nov. 28, 1618, "the great Charter of Privileges, Orders and Laws" under which popular elective government was granted to the colony. It is recorded that on that night a blazing star appeared in the heavens, beto- kening to the mind of the superstitious, dire calami- ties, and, among them, "death to kings." It was under this new instrument of popular rights that the first House of Burgesses was elected (by ballot) in the year 1619, Governor Yeardley's proclama- tion providing "that two burgesses should be elected from each plantation freely by the inhab- itants thereof ; this Assembly to have power to make and ordain whatsoever laws and orders should by them be thought good and profitable." This first
442 KELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
congress of American freemen assembled in the choir of the church at Jamestown* on Friday, July 30, 1619, and it is to that spot and that day that we must look for the foundation of popular government in America, and not to the "Compact" made in the cabin of the Mayflower more than a year later. Without detracting from the honor which rightly belongs to the Pilgrim fathers, history compels us to acknowledge "that civil and religious liberty in the new world owe their first debt to broadminded churchmen, and to the liberality of the Church of England, which was also the great factor in holding America for the Anglo-Saxon against the Church of Eome." It would be foolish as well as churlish to disparage the great part played in the evolution of our civilization, and the establishment of our inde- pendence, and the creation of our free institutions by NewEngland and by other colonies, North and South. The Puritans, the Independents, the Scotch-Irish, the Dutch, the Huguenots, all contributed nobly and honorably to the upbuilding of the nation. As to the civilization which naturally goes hand in hand with the development of free institutions, let it be noted that at the town of Henrico, not far distant from Jamestown, was built in 1612 "an hospital with four score lodgings (and beds already sent to furnish them) for the sick and wounded or lame, with keepers to attend them for their comfort and recoverie." At the same place in the year 1619-20, was organized the University of Henrico, with 10,000 acres of land for its endowment, and also a col- lege for the instruction of the Indians — both unhap- pily destroyed by the Indians in the massacre of 1622, which so nearly destroyed the entire colony.
* The ancient colonial records state that "all the Burgesses tooke their places In the Quire till a prayer was said by Mr. Bucke, the minister, that it would please God to guide and sanctify all our proceedings to His own glory and the good of this plantation."
ESTABLISHED CHUKCH IX VIRGINIA. 443
A free school was also embraced in the scheme, and was established on May 11, 1621, at City Point. The College of "William and Mary was established at Williamsburg in the year 1693, and became a nursery of liberty.
Jamestown the Cradle of Liberty.
Facts such as these justify the statement that the earliest spring and source of American civili- zation, American Christianity and American con- stitutional liberty is to be found on the soil of the Jamestown colony. This statement is not incon- sistent with the recognition of the numerous mis- sions and settlements established by the Spanish in various parts of the American continent from 1539 and onward. For none of these settlements con- tributed anything to the civilization or christianiza- tion of the United States of America. No one of them may be called the spring and source of Ameri- can Christianity partly because most of them were outside the territory of the thirteen colonies, and partly because most of these attempts at colo- nization were abortive attempts; they were like streams which sink into the earth and disappear; no fertilizing rivers flowed from them. Some of the settlements in Florida, New Mexico and Cali- fornia survived, but the stream of American Chris- tianity had been flowing for more than 200 years before these missions could possibly have mingled their waters with it.
Resuming the consideration of the relation of this Church of England colony to the development of liberty, let it be remembered that when Crom- well's fleet appeared in the James River to whip the rebellious Old Dominion into obedience, Richard Lee and Sir William Berkeley demanded and ob-
444 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
tained, as a condition of the submission of the col- only to the iron Dictator, an acknowledgment of Virginia as an independent dominion, and the recog- nition of the principle of no taxation without repre- sentation, and this more than a century before the Revolution. Here, also, in 1676, just 100 years before the revolt of the colonies, that remarkable man, Nathaniel Bacon, soldier, orator, leader, raised the standard of rebellion against the oppressions of the British crown. When the aggregate popula- tion of the colony did not exceed 40,000 souls, Bacon and his followers actually defied the whole power of Great Britain. Let it also be noted that that limited area of Virginia soil embraced within the arms of the Potomac, the Eappahannock, the York and the James rivers, was prolific in men of genius and force, and intense devotion to liberty to a degree never equaled, perhaps, in any region of equal size and of so small a population, in modern times. Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge, speaking of this Virginia aristocracy, has well said: "We must go back to Athens to find another example of a society so small in numbers, capable of such an outburst of ability and force."
Attitude of Church Toward Revolution.
Coming now to the story of the American Revo- lution, it is often said that the English Church in the colonies was not in sympathy with the Revolu- tion; that her clergy were generally Tories and either fled the country or aided and abetted the English in the struggle. This statement is a gross exaggeration, at least as far as Virginia and Caro- lina are concerned. In South Carolina it is certain that Tories were the exception and not the rule among the clergy of the Episcopal Church; and as
ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN VIRGINIA. 445
to Virginia, out of ninety-two clergymen holding parishes at the outbreak of the Eevolution, it is ascertained that eleven entered the patriot army either as officers or chaplains, and twelve more took a leading part on the committees of safety and other active organizations for supporting the Revolution; thus twenty-three of the clergy, nearly one-fourth of the entire number, took an active part in the patriots' great struggle. That was certainly no small proportion, and it may be presumed that many more were in sympathy with the Eevolution though not active in its measures. The fact that a considerable number of the clergy being English- men, and having taken the oath of supremacy, held to the royal cause was not strange, but nearly all such appear to have left their parishes ; their people were too zealous for the Revolution to admit of their remaining.
Contribution of Laity to Civil and Religious Liberty.
It is, however, when we come to examine the rec- ord of the lay members of the Anglo-Saxon church, that we discover how great a debt this nation owes to that colony and that church. We are struck first of all by the fact that the names which are contin- ually recurring in the records of the vestries of the Virginia parishes are also those which are most conspicuous in the Revolution, both in the council chamber and on the field of battle, and subsequently in those high debates concerning the structure of our institutions. The Randolphs, the Pendletons, the Masons, the Nelsons, the Madisons, the Monroes, the Pages, the Carys, the Carters, the Harrisons, the Lees, the Marshalls (to name no more) were all Church of England families. In fact, as Bishop Meade remarks, we may fairly trace in the histories
446 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
of the vestries the origin, not only of that religious liberty which afterwards developed itself in Vir- ginia, but also of the early and determined stand taken by the Episcopalians in Virginia, on behalf of civil liberty. The vestries were the intelligence and moral strength of the land, and they had been trained up in defense of their rights against bishops, kings, queens and cabinets. They had been fighting by anticipation the battles of the Revolution for 150 years. ''Taxation and representation" was only another form of expression for support and elec- tion of ministers. The principle was the same. We may here recall that these churchmen of Virginia, Carolina and the other English colonies were the descendants of the men who extorted the Magna Charta from King John at Eunnymede They had thus a birthright of liberty. It came to them by inheritance. It was in their blood. They could not forget that it was provided in that immortal instrument that "The Church of England shall be free and hold her rights entire and her liberties inviolate," and also "that all men have and hold the aforesaid liberties truly and peaceably, freely and quietly and wholly in all things and in all places forever."
This act of Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Can- terbury, and the barons who followed his lead, was inspired by the same spirit of resistance to civil and ecclesiastical tyranny as burst forth three centuries later in the English Reformation. That great spiritual revolution was initiated and carried forth in the face of persecution and martyrdom by the love of truth and the love of liberty. The Protest- ant movement struck the fetters from the Bible, and set it free to emancipate the minds of men from tyr- anny as well as from superstition. These church-
ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN VIRGINIA. 447
men of the thirteen colonies, in common with their Protestant brethren of other names, had felt the impulse of the Eeformation towards personal lib- erty in church and state. Only, the English Church was looked to as the great bulwark of the Prot- estant cause, and this, perhaps, naturally intensi- fied their feelings as the sons and heirs of liberty. However that may have been, it is certain that the sons of this Anglo-Saxon church were peculiarly distinguished in the Eevolutionary epoch by the services they rendered to civil and religious liberty.
First Statute of Complete Religious Liberty.
It was George Mason, of Gunston, a loyal son of the Virginia church, who first enunciated the principle of complete freedom of conscience and of religious belief as one of the fundamental rights of every citizen. He clothed this principle in the Virginia Bill of Eights in the following language:
"That religion is the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it can be directed only by reason and convic- tion, not by force or violence, and therefore that all men should enjoy the fullest toleration in the exercise of religion according to the dic- tates of conscience, unpunished and unrestrained by the magistrate."
It is true that persecution for religious opinion's sake was practiced in the Virginia colony from time to time for the first 150 years of its existence. But it ought to be remembered that the rigorous laws against Quakers, Eoman Catholics and Puritans were brought from over sea, and when, as was rarely the case, they were enforced, it was by the civil power, and not by the Church. Moreover, while the letter of the colonial law in ecclesiastical matters was the echo of the despotic courts in Eng- land, * ' the spirit of the administration was mild and equitable." There were none put to death in Vir- ginia for religious opinion. Bancroft recognizes a
448 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
spirit of toleration in Virginia in the Seventeenth century.
Over against these conditions in Virginia, atten- tion is often directed to the Act of Toleration passed in the colony of Maryland in 1649. But in the first place, the toleration in Maryland, as far as it went, was the happy result of the circumstance that Lord Baltimore, the proprietor, being a Roman Catholic, and holding his charter from a Protestant king, was drawn to toleration as a prudential meas- ure; and in the second place, the toleration pro- claimed by that famous act was of a very limited character, inasmuch as it prescribed the penalty of death to any one who denied the divinity of Christ or the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, and punished with fine, whipping and imprisonment whoever should utter reproachful words concerning the Vir- gin Mary or the holy apostles. Even the rigorous code of "Lawes, divine, morall, and martiall," pro- mulgated by the London Company for the Virginia colony in 1611, hardly went beyond this.
Here we cannot forbear pausing to say that who- ever will impartially compare the Virginia Bill of Eights with the famous English Bill of Eights of 1689 must be constrained to give the palm for statesmanship and for power of expression to the American document, and to confess that the great author of the English bill, Lord John Somers, illus- trious and learned as he was, justly termed the "apostle of liberty" in his generation, and Eng- land's deliverer from the tyrannous yoke of James II, was here inferior in diction and in noble, patri- otic passion, as well as in the masterly expression of the fundamental rights of man, to that plain Vir- ginia farmer and vestryman of Pohick Church, George Mason of Gunston.
ESTABLISHED CHUECH IN VIRGINIA. 449
The Virginia statute of religious liberty is to be traced to the same source, the sons of the Estab- lished Church. In old Bruton Church at Williams- burg, a tablet has been placed, inscribed as follows :
' ' To the glory of God and in memory of the members of the com- mittee which drafted the law establishing religious freedom in Vir- ginia,— Thomas Jefferson, vestryman of St. Ann's Parish; Edmund Pendleton, vestryman of Drysdale Parish; George Wythe, vestryman of Bruton Parish; George Mason, vestryman of Truro Parish; Thomas Ludwell Lee, vestryman of Overwharton Parish, — being all the mem- bers of the committee. ' '
These men could not tolerate special privilege, even when their own church was its beneficiary. Their love of liberty, their abhorrence of the injus- tice of requiring any man to support a religion or a church in which he did not believe, was such that they were willing to be considered the enemies of their mother church in depriving her of such spe- cial privileges, confident that in doing so they were really setting her free, and striking from her limbs weights that clogged her progress; and so it came to pass that dissenters in Virginia owed their eman- cipation from the ecclesiastical inequalities of the church establishment chiefly to these illustrious sons of the Episcopal Church. Indeed, at an ear- lier date, in 1776, the bond between church and state was severed and the Episcopal Church in Vir- ginia disestablished by the aid of her own lay members.
Still more conspicuous were the services of the sons of this Anglo-Saxon church to civil liberty. As already stated, it was in a church builded at Jamestown that the House of Burgesses met on July 30, 1619 — more than twelve months before the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Eock — to leg- islate for the welfare of the people — the first auton- omous body of legislators assembled on American
V»l. 10—29
450 BELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
soil, and the forerunner and prototype of all free legislative bodies since organized in our country. It was in another Episcopal Church of Virginia — old St. John's of Richmond — that the great orator of the Eevolution, Patrick Henry, himself a devout son of the church, thundered the popular demand for freedom from the oppressive rule of the British crown, in that speech in which he cried, "Give me liberty or give me death!" Indeed, the church buildings of the establishment throughout the col- ony were largely used for assemblies of patriots at the time of the Eevolution.
Eminent Members of the Established Church and Their Influence.
Upon the whole it is not too much to say that the greatest thinkers, orators and organizers, as well as the one supreme soldier of the Revolutionary epoch, were sons of the Established Church of Virginia. We may enumerate some of them :
George Mason, the friend and mentor of Wash- ington, who, in June, 1776, drafted that profound and wonderful document, the Virginia Bill of Rights — the first written constitution of a free state, upon which the Massachusetts Bill of Rights was modeled, and all succeeding instruments of the kind adopted by the different colonies ; Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence ; Richard Henry Lee, the eloquent author and advocate of that auda- cious resolution, "that these colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states;" Peyton Randolph, who presided over the first con- gress of patriots which organized the Revolution; Patrick Henry, whose matchless eloquence fired the hearts of Americans, not only in Virginia, but all over the land, to take up arms against the king; George Wythe, one of the ablest and most conspic-
ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN VIRGINIA. 451
uous of the Virginia patriots; Edmund Pendleton, first president of the court of appeals; Archibald Gary, the lion-hearted friend of liberty; James Madison, who earned the title of the "Father of the Constitution;" John Marshall, the great chief justice who became the most illustrious interpreter of the Constitution;* and finally George Washington, the Father of His Country, who having first won our independence by his sword, then by his patient and far-seeing statesmanship consolidated the Republic under the aegis of the Constitution. Among the sol- diers of the Revolution, mention should be made also of Gen. Henry Lee, General Muhlenberg, General Wood and General Nelson, all sons of the Estab- lished Church in Virginia.
John Fiske, the Massachusetts historian, has told the world that there were five great men of that epoch who may be said to have made the nation,— Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison and Marshall. Now all five of these makers of the Re- public were sons of the Episcopal Church, and four out of the five were Virginians. To quote in fine the words of Mr. Sidney George Fisher of Penn- sylvania, "We are still dominated by the ideas of these Virginians. We follow their thoughts. We obey the fundamental laws and principles they framed without even a desire to change them." If these historians are right, then the debt of this nation to that Virginia civilization and to the Estab- lished Church can hardly be exaggerated. It is not too much to say that the Anglo-Saxon church, planted in Virginia, led the way in the making of
* The Episcopal Church furnished thirty-four out of fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence. It also furnished twenty-five out of thirty-nine signers of the Constitution of the United States — about two-thirds of the whole number. And it pave to the Revolution and to the young Republic that brilliant financier and illustrious statesman, Alexander Hamilton.
452 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
the Republic. It was her voice, through these her sons, that taught the people the first rudiments of liberty. It was her influence that was most puis- sant, through these great men, in establishing our free institutions. Let the historian, who would estimate the place which that church ought to occupy in the annals of the Eepublic, look at the stature of the patriots whom she gave to the Revolution; let him observe that they are not only among the giants of that remarkable epoch — they are the greatest of the giants; and then let him ask himself how the story of the Revolution and the rise of the republic would have read, if the names of these men were blotted from our annals.
The answer to that question will gauge the debt of America to the Anglo-Saxon church established in Virginia.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Of the voluminous literature on the subject the following volumes may be mentioned : Anderson, J. S. M. : The Church of England in the Colonies (3 vols., 1856); Brown, Alexander: The Genesis of the United States (2 vols.), and The First Eepublic in America (1898); Brown: The Church for Americans; Fiske, John: Old Virginia and Her Neighbors; Goodwin, W. A. R. : Bmton Parish Restored (1907); Hawks, Francis: Narrative of Events Connected With the Rise and Progress of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Virginia; McConnell, S. D. : History of the American Episcopal Church (1891); Meade: Old Churches and Families in Virginia (1857); Perry: History of the American Episcopal Church (2 vols., 1885); Smith, Capt. John: History of Virginia; Tiffany, C. C.: History of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1895); The Records of the Virginia Company of London, The Court Boole, from the Manu- script in the Library of Congress (2 vols., 1906); Halcluyt's Dis- course of Western Planting; Hening's Statutes.
RANDOLPH HARRISON McKiM,
President of the House of Clerical and Lay Deputies and Eector of the Church of the Epiphany, Washington, D. C.
EELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS. 453
CHAPTER III.
EELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
•
HE movements that go to make up the civ- ilization of a people are, roughly speaking, three: the religious, the political and the social. The religious offers to men their ideals, the political shows their efforts to give free play to their ideals, the social is the picture of men realizing their ideals in their daily interplay of thought and conduct.
"As we think, we are." Our thoughts, our ideals, mould our very being within; and they go out to affect our conduct towards our fellow men. Prac- tically speaking, a man's religion may be defined to be his attitude of mind and heart towards God and his fellow men; and, when we say a man lives his religion, we mean that he manifests in his daily con- duct this attitude of his mind and heart.
So we see how important is the religion of a man in shaping his own and the character of his fellow men. We perceive, then, how necessary it is, if we would understand the people of the South, to study those movements which have given their religion to the groups of men who have been moulding our social life and building our civilization.
The people of the South are a religious people: religion has been a mighty force in our upbuilding. We are a homogeneous people, chiefly of Anglo- Saxon stock; our religious movements have either had their rise in England, or have come to us tinged by a shorter or longer sojourn in our mother land. We are a conservative people, not much given to running after new things ; our religious movements
454 BELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
have not been many or various, but have come with and kept close to the great Churches which claim the allegiance of the Southern people and mould their civilization.
Naming these movements in point of time, they are: Episcopal, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Disciples of Christ.
The Protestant Episcopal Church.
Eeligion, represented by the Episcopal Church, came over to America with the first colonists. It was according to the service of the Prayer-Book that the first sacraments were celebrated on these shores by men of the English race: the baptism of Virginia Dare on Koanoke Island, and the adminis- tration of the Lord's Supper by Eobert Hunt to the settlers of Jamestown. The Episcopal Church came to Charleston with Yeamans and to Savannah with Ogiethorpe. It grew and strengthened as the settle- ments increased in numbers and size, but it suffered many hindrances in this new land up to the begin- ning of the Nineteenth century. It was burdened and hindered by the general lack of personal religion among the upper classes, by the unspiritual char- acter of many of its clergy, by its connection with the state, being the English Church established by law and exacting its revenues by taxation ; the Eng- lish Church suspected by the people during and after the Eevolution. For a while after the Revolutionary War the number of clergy in Virginia had decreased from ninety-five to sixty, and only three clergymen were at work in the state of North Carolina.
But one of our most striking religious movements has been the resuscitation and progress of this mother church of the English-speaking people. Her bishops have become true successors of the Apostles in life and labor, her ministers spiritual pastors of
KELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS. 4*3
the flock, and her people have put spirit and power into those beautiful forms which have led the devo- tions of saints of God in all ages. Led by such men as Meade and Kavenscroft, Otey and Elliott, Cobb and Polk, she has awakened to new life in the older states, and has gone forth to take her part in making pure and righteous the life of the South and South- west.
The ideals which the Episcopal Church holds up to the people of this land are chiefly three: one Church through all time for all people, holding its continuity of life by an unbroken order of living men, insisting on the few great facts of the Apostles' Creed in matters of faith and on the example of Jesus Christ in matters of conduct ; second, the dig- nity of worship, with the well ordered services of the chaste and fervid Book of Common Prayer; third, the fact that religion is a part of the natural and normal life of man, and so it should permeate and elevate all his life, social and business, his pleasures as well as his labors. The first has made men conservative, holding on to the best in the past, obedient to just authority, and it has contributed to freedom of thought and development of character in the liberty allowed in the formation of opinions and in the detailed activities of life; the second tends to reverence, culture and to a restrained expression of religious feeling; the third meets the wants among men for recreation and refreshment, and brings religion to bear on the whole man and on every class and phase of society.
The Roman Catholic Church.
While the Southern states have been and are Prot- estant, the Eoman Catholic Church has played no mean part in their beginnings and growth. She was second to appear among the religious forces that
456 KELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
contributed to the upbuilding of the English colonies in our part of the United States; for it was in the year 1634 that one of her faithful sons, Lord Bal- timore, founded the colony of Maryland. Long before any Englishman set foot on our shores. Ponce de Leon discovered and occupied Florida, and De Soto crossed the Mississippi. In 1682 La Salle sailed down the Mississippi to its mouth, called the coun- try Louisiana, and claimed it for France in the name of ' ' the most Christian king, ' ' Louis XIV. Devoted priests of the church followed these hardy explorers, and quickly established Spanish, French and Indian missions.
Since colonial days the Roman Catholic Church has prospered in Baltimore on the north and New Orleans on the south, and has exerted strong influ- ence in most of our cities. She has grown largely by immigration, and her chief power and progress have been in the cities and large towns. Men like Charles Carroll of Maryland, William Gaston of North Caro- lina, and George Ben Johnson of Virginia, have, in all parts of our southland, added honor to their state and heightened men's regard for their church.
The three great religious ideas which the Roman Catholic Church presents to our people are: The one Church of Christ for all people, with its centre of unity in the Pope of Rome; the principle of authority and obedience; the obligation and the privilege of confession and absolution. The first gives visible interpretation to the Scriptural teach- ing of unity in the one Body of Christ, and it stirs men's imagination by the spectacle of one organiza- tion, reaching into all parts of the world, standing steadfast amid the whirling centuries, paying unfal- tering homage to their Sovereign Lord who rules from the ' ' Eternal City. ' ' The second, training men to look on the Pope as speaking on earth for Christ
RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS. 457
and expressing His authority, makes them bow in unquestioning obedience to his teaching and com- mands as represented to them by their priest. So the people hold to their allegiance ; and many a puz- zled mind finds rest in the Church's confident state- ments. The third meets the universal longing of the guilty soul to unburden its load by a full confession to a sympathizing fellow mortal; and it adds the further comfort, which comes from assurance of pardon by one who stands, in the sinner's mind, as near to God as frail human beings can.
The Presbyterian Church.
The Presbyterians came over to America in the latter days of the Seventeenth and all along through the Eighteenth centuries. They settled largely in the valley of Virginia and the southern part of North Carolina. From these centres emigrants journeyed into the countries south and west. Individuals and small companies from the old country came more or less regularly and settled all through the South ; they ennobled every community with that intelli- gence, honesty and industry which spring so nat- urally from the Scotch race and faith. In 1810 the Cumberland Presbyterians broke away from their brethren, demanding a greater liberty of interpreta- tion of Holy Scriptures and a larger freedom in preaching the Gospel ; but, after many years of vig- orous life, they have lately reunited with the Pres- byterian Church South. When the War of Seces- sion broke out, the Presbyterians of the South pro- tested against the resolutions of the General Assem- bly, which recognized the Federal government, and demanded for that authority the allegiance of all good Presbyterians in the United States. They declared that the Church as such should not, accord- ing to Scripture, interfere in matters of state and
458 EELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
decide the delicate questions of political sovereignty and allegiance. They organized themselves into the Presbyterian Church South ; and they issued a mani- festo to the Christian world, which, for its dignity, simplicity and ability takes first rank among the great church papers of religious history.
The three ideals of Presbyterianism in the South are : First, the family is the unit in all human life, natural, civil and religious ; second, the necessity for a true doctrinal statement of the faith as a basis for the Church and as a term of communion for the faithful; third, the importance of education to the ministry and people. The first admits the children of Christian, and only of Christian, parents to mem- bership in the Church of Christ by baptism, empha- sizes the intimate closeness of the family relations and intensifies the responsibility of a training worthy of such a birthright; the second has given rise to great teachers and preachers of theology and has forced the people to think deeply on the noble questions of religious philosophy ; the third, spring- ing naturally from the first and second, has made the Presbyterians pioneers in the education of our people, urging them to build school-houses and academies, furnishing the teachers for our boys and girls, and stimulating the common folk by the spec- tacle of the poorest overcoming all obstacles to gain the benefits of an education.
The Baptist Church.
The Baptists date their origin in America to Roger Williams, that fearless pioneer who would rather brave the terrors of the savage and the wil- derness than the fierce intolerance of his Christian brethren. From New England and from old Eng- land the Baptists came to Virginia and the Carolina* and thence on to the new states and territories.
KELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS. ; 459
They formed a part of every pioneer movement that thrust our English civilization out into the wilder- ness. Simple, brave, earnest men, independent in religious and political thought, in individual and church life, they preached the Gospel as they believed it in the face of indifference, ridicule or persecution, despite the opposition of church or state. Their simple church organization readily adapted itself to the roughest and humblest condi- tions of life; and wherever a small company of Baptists found themselves living together, whether in village or country districts, there a Baptist church was organized, and there some natural leader, accepted and set aside for the work by the brethren, tilled his fields through the week and preached tho gospel of love and life on Sunday.
The contributions of the Baptist denomination to our religious forces are: First, religious toleration and freedom; second, the value of every individual soul before God and his responsibility and ability to interpret Holy Scripture and to settle every religious problem for himself; third, the right and duty of each Christian congregation to set up its own government and to decide on its own terms of communion and qualifications of membership. The first points them out as lineal descendants of Eoger Williams in his contention for a free church in a free state; it reminds us that it was due largely to the influence of the Baptists that Virginia adopted Jef- ferson's bill of religious liberty, and that the United States ratified that amendment to the constitution which proscribed any establishment of religion ; and it impresses all our people with the thorough-going acceptance of the far-reaching truth that every man shall be allowed to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. The second prin- ciple, forbidding them to accept any but intelligent
460 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
believers to baptism and church membership, has helped to make the Bible a familiar book in every Christian household, revealing to every man the faith by which he must live and die. The third preaches the democracy of the church and the equality and responsibility of its members, and urges men to realize that every member ought to take his part in making the life of his own congre- gation high and in keeping its doctrine pure.
The Methodist Church.
Next in time came the movement of the strong and zealous Methodist Church. John Wesley began his revival of religion in Oxford, made his short missionary stay in Georgia, came back to England, underwent his mysterious conversion, and then began his wonderful, blessed work for God in Eng- land. The first fruits of the * ' Holy Club ' ' at Oxford was the inspiring and eloquent George Whitefield. Beginning in England, crossing and re-crossing the Atlantic, sweeping up and down in America, moving like a flaming fire from Maine to Georgia, opening men's hearts, melting their wills and changing their lives, Whitefield 's work in the United States might well be called a religious movement in itself. Robert Williams and John King took up his work in Vir- ginia and North Carolina, and formed Methodist societies in these states. Shortly after, Francis Asbury was sent over by Wesley to be the superin- tendent and then the bishop of the societies in America ; and for fifty years this remarkable man- great in character and in ability, unwearied and unceasing in travel and preaching — led and gov- erned the growing hosts of Methodism. At the close of the Revolution the strength of the Methodists was in Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina; and from these older states they went forth with the
BELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS. 461
pioneers to the South and West. No settlements were too sparse, no road too rough, no wilderness too wild for the itinerant Methodist preacher. He rode forth at the command of his chief, confident of his message, trusting in God, unafraid of man or beast. The "circuit rider" is, perhaps, the most significant figure in the religious movements of the South. He was a strong, stern man, repressing fun and gaiety as worldly pleasures dangerous to the soul, with no worldly goods save that which he car- ried on his back and in his saddle-bags, breaking the stillness of the forests as he rode his lonely way with the ejaculations of prayer or the melody of gospel hymns, sitting by the blazing hearth of a pioneer's cabin, teaching of hell and heaven, praying for the outpouring of the Spirit on the family gathered round, standing on some rude platform in the woods, warning his eager listeners to fly from the wrath to come, urging them to seek for safety and peace in the blood of Jesus.
The three-fold influence which the Methodist Church has exerted on the life of our people is: First, insistence on the necessity of personal piety and heart religion ; second, a sharp division between the Church and the world, repressing with a stern hand all worldly amusements; third, the power of organization and the self-denial of the individual minister. The first recalls ever the fact that Meth- odism began as a revival of spiritual religion in the darkest time of England's religious history; and it has taught men to look for the answer of the Holy Spirit to our spirit in our moral and religious living. From this ideal has come "the revivals" and "the camp meetings" which have been such a marked feature in our Southern religious life. The second principle urges men to see that there must be a difference in the life of "the converted" and
462 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
that of "the unconverted," and to give up all the pleasures of life which* are or may be tainted with sin. The third idea shows the success that will come to a clergy ready to march at the leader's command, and to a system which links the humblest class leader to the all-powerful bishop, the whole animated by one common and inspiring motive.
The Disciples of Christ.
The last religious movement which I shall men- tion is that which began in Western Virginia in the early days of the Nineteenth century and which has grown so rapidly that today its adherents hold the sixth place in numbers among the churches of the United States. For full fifty years Alexander Camp- bell guided, inspired and defended it ; and it is with a true appreciation of his stimulating and over- shadowing influence that the people commonly speak of his followers as " Campbellites. " Thomas Camp- bell, a Presbyterian minister, came over from Ire- land in the year 1807 and settled not far from the meeting point of Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Pious, energetic, gentle, liberal, he set forth the religious ideals of which I shall speak presently. For these he was censured by his Presbytery and was finally forced to leave the Presbyterian Church. Thomas then turned over the leadership to his stronger and sterner son Alexander; and they then affiliated for some years with the Baptists. They left the Baptists in 1827 and formed a separate organization under the name of the Disciples of Christ. They have now many churches in all parts of the country; but their chief strength is in the South and the middle West.
The three chief principles of the Disciples of Christ are : First, there is in the purpose of Christ Jesus, and ought to be actually and visibly in the
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world, one and only one church; second, no church should have a theological creed as its basis and any terms of communion other than in the words of Holy Writ; third, the Bible and the Bible alone is suffi- cient to show the way of salvation to the individual and to provide for the organization and guidance of the Church. The first calls men's attention to the Christ ideal of one Church for all men and to the practical obligation on Christians to live together as brethren in the one family of God; the second, opening the Lord's Supper to all believers, cuts away the barriers which men have raised by doc- trinal statements and religious philosophy, and shows how few are the essential truths of the Chris- tian faith; the third exalts Holy Scripture in the eyes of all men, bids them search diligently and assures them that they will find therein all that men need to know of God and of His will for man.
The Negro.
The Negro, tha* child-like and imitative race, which makes up one-third of the population of the South, has had no real religious movements of his own. They followed largely in the days of slavery the religious teachings which guided their masters. Since their emancipation they have turned en masse to the Methodist and Baptist, and have practically divided themselves in faith and system between these two churches, but standing apart as separate organ- izations of their own race. The short and clear cut teaching of the Baptists and their spectacular form of baptism have influenced their simple minds and childish imagination; and, on the other hand, the feeling and excitement so necessary to the Metho- dist training have strongly appealed to their emo- tional natures.
464 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
Other Movements.
In addition to the above mentioned historic and psychological religious movements distinctive of the churches, I should say that there are certain move- ments today common to them all. One is the mis- sionary ideal and effort : each Church is moving for- ward propagating its own specific principles, urging men to follow with them to serve our common Master; each is striving to go out and to send out its influence to make this land of America a Chris- tian land ; and each is putting forth its prayer and its power to make all heathen lands acknowledge Christ Jesus as their Lord and Master. Another is the holding together more and more tenaciously the few fundamental truths of Christ, which may be summed up in the Apostles' Creed, and allowing a wide divergence of opinion on matters of religious theology and philosophy. A third is the growing perception that religion must affect conduct, that it is the power of God unto salvation f rOm sin and into righteousness of life, rather than a matter of mental conviction or of emotional experience. A fourth and last is the movement towards unity; the inter- mingling in worship, the toleration of differing opinions, the kindliness of feeling, the willingness to see the good in the distinctive positions of the others. Thus we see that the special principles of each Church are softened and tempered as they come into contact with those of the others; thus we find that each is absorbing for its own some of the good which it has come to find in the others ; thus we per- ceive that each is slowly realizing that the whole truth and power of God is larger than any one of ue has seen, and, therefore, to rejoice in the good that comes to mankind from each and all. So, then, these religious movements are blending more and more
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into one mighty stream of moral and spiritual influ- ence on the people of our beloved land, and are making sweeter, richer, stronger its growing and advancing civilization.
ROBERT STRANGE,
Bishop of East Carolina, of the Protestant Episcopal Church.
CHAPTER IV.
DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN THE SOUTH.
HE principles of the Reformation of the Sixteenth century involved the principles of religious freedom. But this implication was not seen; or, if seen, was not regarded as a principle whose application was practicable or desirable. The antagonistic principle of the pro- priety of the union of church and state continued to prevail. Every Protestant body which practically was able to do so, came into close union with a civil power, its creed becoming that state's religious creed. The logic of such a union was intolerance of every other form of religion than the state's form. Hence the Protestant belief in the inalienable right of man to the exercise of his private judgment in all matters of religion was accompanied by little toler- ance for any who, in the exercise of that God-given right, differed in the more important conclusions thus reached. Only less tolerant of differing Protes- tant faiths than of the Papal faith, European Prot- estant intolerance waxed and waned, but always obtained throughout the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries.
Vol. 10—30
466 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
Religious Liberty in the Colonies.
The early North American colonists, whether coming to find an asylum in which they could wor- ship God in their own preferred way, or coming as members of the established church of their native land, came possessed by the principle of intolerance and ready to apply it against all representatives of other faiths than their own. The most liberal col- onies were those founded by Lord Baltimore, Will- iam Penn, and Roger Williams. Two of these men were moved by altruistic considerations in part, but to each of them self-interest dictated his liberal course. Even they advocated only a circumscribed liberty. ''Baltimore only professed to make free soil for Christianity. Penn only tolerated those who believed in one Almighty and Eternal God, the creator, upholder, and ruler of the world ; and denied the right to hold office to all except Christians. Will- iams' charter was expressly to propagate Christian- ity, and under it a law was enacted excluding all except Christians from the rights of citizenship, and including in the exclusion Eoman Catholics." More- over, Episcopalian intolerance was established in Maryland as early as 1692, and prevailed throughout the remaining life of the colony.
Up to 1776, "although more than one sect had claimed religious freedom and an absolute divorce of church and state, no civil government had ever allowed the claim." Providence assigned to one of the Southern colonies of North America the func- tion of incorporating into the foundation of her government the recognition of the right of all men to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience; and the function of leading the national government and all the several states of the American Union to similar positions.
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In the brief study of the advancement of religious liberty in the South, the colonies of Maryland, Georgia and the Carolinas, for the most part may be disregarded. In each of these colonies along with the Established Church, in behalf of which a high degree of intolerance was sometimes shown, there commonly existed only a limited intolerance. Hence Dissenters were not provoked to fight efficiently for larger things. The real struggle in behalf of religious liberty went on in Virginia.
The early colonists of Virginia were, in the main, conforming Englishmen. They had not come over for religious reasons but to improve their fortunes. They naturally established the Church of England by law. As the Church of England did not become thoroughly episcopal till the act of Uniformity of 1662, passed by the Cavalier Parliament, it was roomy enough for many on whom episcopacy sat lightly. As large freedom was encouraged by the Virginia Company of London, and as the English government showed breadth of mind after it took immediate oversight of the Virginia colony in 1624, it was natural that many should come into the colony, some of whom had small sympathy for exclusive episcopacy, and some of whom were Separatists.
The majority in the colonial legislature developed a rigid episcopacy, however. Beginning as early as 1624, the House of Burgesses enacted statutes designed to bring "Our Church as near as may be to the canons of England," and culminating in that of 1624, requiring the governor and council to expel all Non-Conformists, and in the severe laws of 1662, intended for all Separatists but especially for the Quakers. These laws were applied with much resolution. Non-Episcopal colonists were driven away into Maryland, the Carolinas and elsewhere.
468 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH. The Act of Toleration.
The revolution of 1688, which put William of Orange and Mary, his wife, into the place of James Stuart on the English throne, is justly regarded as epochal in the history of religious liberty. "The privileges of conscience having had no earlier Magna Charta and petition of right whereto they could appeal against encroachments," William secured the passage of the Act of Toleration. "This act exempted from the penalties of existing statutes against separate conventicles, or absence from the established worship, such as should take the oath of allegiance and subscribe the declaration against popery, and such ministers of separate congrega- tions as should subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England/' three of those articles and a portion of the fourth excepted. It gave also an indulgence to Quakers without this condition. Meetinghouses were required to be registered, and were protected from insult by a penalty.
The Toleration Act gave but a scant measure of religious liberty. The Dissenters still labored under civil disabilities. The Test Act and Corporation Act still stood between them and civil office. But small though this chartered right of religious liberty was, it was a bulwark of that degree conceded ; and involved in it seeds germinant and growing into larger liberties.
Rev. Francis Makemie and the Presbyterians.
Meanwhile, about 1683, Presbyterians in the county of Accomac and on Elizabeth River, taking advantage of certain favorable local conditions, secured as their minister Rev. Francis Makemie, of typical Scotch-Irish character. Makemie suffered for years under the laws of Virginia, for he "Durst
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not deny preaching, and hoped he never should while it was wanting and desired." "In defense of himself he appeared before magistrates and before the Governor"; and he is accredited with occasion- ing the incorporation of the Toleration Act into the Virginia laws, which was not done till 1699, and then only by a grudging and belittling reference. Could he have preached without restraint, wherever he found a ready ear on the people's part, he would have preferred this greater freedom. But he was ready to avail himself to the utmost of the legal advantage of the Toleration Act in lieu of something better, and in the year 1699 he secured, from the county court of Accomac, a certificate of qualifica- tion under that act. Passing through the province of New York, he incurred the displeasure of Lord Cornbury by preaching in the city of New York and elsewhere; suffered bitter and protracted per- secution at the hands of the governor ; but vindicated his right to preach under the terms of the Act of Toleration, with great ability. By his sufferings and representations Makemie aroused the indignation of Dissenters in the mother country and through- out the colonies at such indignities as he had been afflicted with, and stirred their opposition to the repetition of such treatment. Having organized the Presbytery of Philadelphia, which overlooked the Presbyterian people from New York to Virginia, he put his impress on the people of this faith ; and after his death, in 1707, continued to live in them, of whom it has been said, "No civil state or religious denomi- nation south of the Hudson, or perhaps in the Union, has done more for the advance of civil liberty, or freedom of conscience and the public welfare."
After 1732, and more rapidly after 1738, Dis- senters, chiefly Presbyterian, began to pour into the great valley of Virginia and formed an ever-
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widening rim around the western and southwestern sides of the older settlement. By 1742 there were congregations at points in Berkeley, Jefferson, Hardy, Bockingham, Augusta, Kockbridge, Bote- tourt, Charlotte, Prince Edward, and Campbell. These Presbyterians, when about to invade the val- ley, had through the mediation of the Synod of Philadelphia, 1738, which already, in the year 1729, had denied to the state all right of control over religion, secured a promise from the Honorable William Gooch, Esquire, lieutenant-governor of the province of Virginia, that no interruption should be given to any ministers of their profession coming among them, provided they should conform them- selves to the rules prescribed by the Act of Tolera- tion in England, by taking the oaths enjoined thereby, and registering the places of their meet- ing for worship; and should behave themselves peaceably toward the government.
Though the governor of Virginia promised thus no more than Makemie had wrested from the author- ities in his day, and nothing more than the English Act of Toleration entitled them to, his promise was an additional bulwark behind which a cautious, if courageous and heroic, people would intrench them- selves till the day of larger things. A wall of defense between eastside Virginia and the savages on the west, and endowed with unusual mental and moral powers, having profoundly democratic ideals, they sent representatives to the Virginia House of Bur- gesses and began a long conflict, "which resulted in the separation of church and state, complete religi- ous toleration, the abolition of primogeniture and entails, and many other important changes, most of which were consummated under the leadership of Thomas Jefferson between 1776 and 1785. With- out the aid of the Valley population, these begin-
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nings of metamorphosis in tidewater Virginia would not have been accomplished. Jefferson is often called the f atlier of modern democracy ; in a certain sense Shenandoah Valley and adjacent Appalachian regions may be called its cradle."*
The Efforts of Rev. Samuel Davies.
About the time of this immigration into the valley certain communities east of the Blue Ridge began to develop Presbyterian principles. Beginning with- out the agency of a minister they, in 1743 and sub- sequently, received the stimulus of occasional visits of evangelists, one of whom, by his free criticism on the degeneracy of the clergy of the colony, brought no small punishments on this body of Dis- senters. To these people came, about 1747, the Rev. Samuel Davies. He came qualified under the Act of Toleration, and having obtained the licensing of four meetinghouses amongst them. Tactful, resource- ful, and strategic in planning; prepossessing and commanding in appearance, and a most persuasive orator, he organized and made an effective body of the Virginia Presbyterians. Mr. Davies con- tended before the General Court of Virginia that licensure of places and ministers was a right to be acknowledged by the government on demand by the Dissenters. Notwithstanding the narrow policy of the council, which was to license the fewest possible number of Dissenting ministers and preaching places, Davies was instrumental in introducing a number of qualified Presbyterian preachers, and securing an ever larger number of licensed meeting- houses. He thus affected the counties of Cumber- land, Powhatan, Prince Edward, Charlotte, Camp- bell, Nottoway and Amelia, in addition to his own peculiar charge which was within the bounds of
* John FIske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, Vol. II, p. 396.
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Hanover, Henrico, Goochlaud, Caroline, Louisa and New Kent. He represented the cause of Virginia Dissenters to Dissenters in England and, through them, to the Bishop of London. Having occasion to travel in England, to collect an endowment for the College of New Jersey, 1753-1754, he represented their cause wherever he could get an audience ; and came back prepared to force by legal steps the licensing of houses for meetings on demand of Dis- senters, and the right of any licensed ministers to preach in any licensed house.
But no such forcing process was to be needed. Providential movements, favorable to Dissenters, were on hand. The French-Indian War was highly favorable to Presbyterian Dissenters.
In that struggle, in which the fate of this coun- try was decided, France had secured as allies a great number of Indian tribes. The Indians had as early as 1754 begun to fall upon the settlers all along the Virginia frontier. The war wasted the spirit and resources of the colony; but Samuel Davies, by sermon and address, stirred the fires of patriotism ever anew. Under such circumstances he found it practicable to perform his ministerial services "wherever duty and conscience inspired him." Other Presbyterian ministers deprecating the expense and labor of a long journey to Williams- burg to obtain a license for a new place of worship, went to using the desired places without licenses; and were unmolested.
To Davies, perhaps, Virginia owes more than to any other man for services in behalf of religious lib- erty. He fought ably for all that the Act of Tolera- tion conceded. In his fight for this he voiced prin- ciples which called for liberties still larger — "The sole supremacy of Christ in the church — the author- ity of the word of God — the equality of the ministers
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of religion — and individual rights of conscience." In addition to what he otherwise did, he put his impress on young Patrick Henry, a mighty instrument in the same great struggle.
Providence works slowly and through many instruments to the accomplishment of great ends. Through the efforts and sufferings of Makemie and Davies and their co-laborers, through the French- Indian War, in which the Dissenters beyond the Blue Ridge bore the brunt of the Indian atrocities, and stood as a wall between such atrocities and the older portion of the colony, the God of Providence was leading Virginia to larger toleration. He was moving also, in the Parson's cause. In 1755 the clergy of the Established Church petitioned for a larger salary. As the French-Indian War was just beginning, as the year 1755 and 1758 were bad crop years for tobacco, and as the clergy, on account of the character of many of them, were not popular, the House of Burgesses not only did not grant the increase of salary, but passed acts which gave the people the right, during specified periods, to pay their tobacco dues and taxes in money, at the rate of twopence per pound — the usual price when crops were fair. As tobacco was worth three times as much in 1758, the clergy complained loudly, held that these acts of the Burgesses were usurpation, and instituted suits in the civil courts to recover damages. Patrick Henry, born of a Presbyterian mother, stamped by the impressive character and teaching of Davies, espoused the cause of the people in this celebrated Parson's cause, and furthered most effectively the growing alienation between clergy and people. By Mr. Henry's picturing of the character of the clergy on this occasion and the con- temporary pamphleteering in which great bitterness was indulged in on both sides, the dominancy of the
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clergy was broken, and the way was opened for disestablishment.
The Baptists of Virginia.
Amongst most important agents in the bringing about of religious freedom were the Baptists. In 1743, a few regular Baptist families had settled in Berkeley county. They spread in the Valley and east of the Blue Ridge till, by 1770, they had churches scattered through the northern neck of Virginia. As early as 1758, Separate Baptists had made a per- manent lodgement in Pittsylvania. About 1766-67 the church was planted in upper Spottsylvania, whereupon it spread rapidly between the Blue Eidge and the Bay Shore. These people were subjected to various kinds of persecutions at the hands of the friends of the Establishment. Persecutions were heaped upon them, in some cases, perhaps, because of their sharp criticisms of the Established clergy. Their preachers were jailed repeatedly in various counties, and by their zeal and constancy gave occa- sion to the advocates of human rights to voice the truth. The records show that the powerful advocacy of Mr. Henry was more than once successfully invoked to defend those imprisoned for the "heinous charge of worshiping God according to the dictates of their own consciences. " Undeterred by persecu- tions, they wrought with the greatest enthusiasm in missionary labors and increased rapidly in num- bers and power, while voicing their sense of injustice at their persecution.
Between 1763 and 1791 a political revolution occurred, on the wheels of which Dissenters rode into their full religious rights. England, on the con- clusion of the war with France, began to enforce a system of repression and taxation on the colonies which the sons of the greater Britain could not
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 475
stand. In March, 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act. On May 30, 1765, Patrick Henry drew up his famous resolutions against the act. He secured their adoption in the Virginia legislature, by the aid of the upper counties, Scotch-Irish and Huguenot Dissenters — chiefly Presbyterians, as yet. He thus made the Eevolutionary War inevitable, through which the establishment of religious liberty was made practicable.
The Virginia Bill of Eights.
By 1772 the Presbyterian Dissenters in Virginia were enjoying larger liberties than were guaranteed by the Act of Toleration; the Quakers, at least, the guaranteed toleration, and the Baptists petitioning that they might be treated * * with the same indulgence in religious matters as Quakers, Presbyterians and other Protestant Dissenters." Under these circum- stances a bill for extending the benefit of the several acts of toleration to His Majesty's Protestant sub- jects in this colony was introduced, engrossed and ordered to be read again a third time, July 1, 1772. This bill was highly objectionable to both Baptists and Presbyterians. Each body objected to certain features of the bill. Each body aimed at something more than could be properly called toleration. The petition of the Presbytery of Hanover, dated Novem- ber 11, 1774, and remonstrating against the pro- posed Bill of Toleration, is described in The Journal of the Virginia Assembly, as " praying that no bill may pass into a law but such as will secure to the petitioners equal liberties and advantages with their fellow subjects." The petitioners declare them- selves "in favor of an unlimited, impartial tolera- tion"; but the unbiased mind will see that they are aiming at more than is denoted by the word tol- eration. They and the Baptists alike at this period
4T6 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
seem to have taken toleration as an "equality of privilege and protection to all denominations, by the civil power." As the war came on "dissenting clergymen" were permitted to celebrate divine wor- ship in the armies, "for the ease of scrupulous consciences."
From the very beginning of the war the Scotch- Irish, Presbyterians and Baptists, threw themselves into its support with the utmost unanimity. By their services they made it possible to obtain their religious rights. The minds of men were becoming more enlightened, too. The skeptical philoso- phy prevailing at that time on the continent of Europe occasioned the questioning of all institu- tions even by conservative men. Accordingly the Virginia convention sitting at Williamsburg in the summer of 1776 adopted a bill of rights, the last clause being in the words: "That religion, or the duty we owe our creator, and the manner of dis- charging it, can be directed only by reason and con- viction, not by force or violence, and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience, and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice for- bearance, love and charity toward each other."
These words, in the main, from the draft of the Bill of Eights presented by the celebrated George Mason, a member of the Established Church, were contributed to the bill by Patrick Henry. One clause only of the Henry-Mason draft received a mate- rial amendment. In their draft it is written that all should enjoy the fullest toleration in the exer- cise of religion. Their use of the word tolera- tion is like that of the Independents of the West- minster Assembly, implying non-interference of the state with the church; nevertheless, the word "tol-
RELIGIOUS LIBEBTY. 477
eration," strictly speaking, implies a power in the civil government to interfere with religion. But young James Madison, ''the son of an Orange county planter, bred in the school of Presbyterian Dissenters, under Witherspoon, at Princeton, trained by his own studies, by meditative rural life in the Old Dominion, by an ingenuous indignation at the persecution of the Baptists, and by the innate principles of right, to uphold the sanctity of religi- ous freedom, objected to the word 'toleration' because it implied an established religion, which endured dissent only as a condescension; and, as the earnestness of his conviction overcame his mod- esty, he proceeded to demonstrate that all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience. His notion, which did but state with better dialectics the very purpose which Mason (and Henry) wished to accom- plish, obtained the suffrages of his colleagues."
The principles of religious freedom had now been expressed in the Virginia Bill of Bights; but it remained to give the principle expression in the laws and life of the state. On October 7, 1776, the General Assembly convened for the first time under the new constitution. At an early date it entered upon the consideration of religious freedom. Peti- tions rained in upon them. Some of them, from Methodist and Episcopal sources, favored the Estab- lishment. The others, from Presbyterians, Luther- ans, and Dissenters in general, were against the Establishment. The memorial of the Presbytery of Hanover, read Oct. 24, 1776, received most consid- erate attention, probably owing to the fact that its substance was ably argumentative and its tone courtly and respectful. A comparison of this memo- rial, together with that of the Presbytery against
478 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
a general assessment, which bears the date of April 25, 1777, with Jefferson's famous "Bill for Estab- lishing Eeligious Freedom," reveals the fact that Hanover Presbytery had expressed with remarkable precision and force the proper relations of church and state, before the great statesman had drafted his act defining those relations, and that the act was no advance on the positions taken by the Presbytery thus early.
Thomas Jefferson having immortalized himself as the author of the Declaration of Independence, had given up his seat in Congress to help on the work of reform in his own state. In the Assembly of 1776 he was the leading champion of religious free- dom. Urged on by the petitions against the Estab- lishment, the Assembly, under his lead, declared against all laws punishing men for their religious opinions, and exempted Dissenters "from contribu- tions to the support of the Established Church." They also suspended until the next session levies on the members of that church for the salaries of their own incumbents, a measure continued in suc- cessive sessions until 1779, when the suspension was made permanent. Even after 1779, the clergy retained the glebes ; claimed the prerogatives of mar- riage ' ' ceremonies with their fees ; and the vestries still exercised the right" of levying and collecting taxes for support of the poor. Following on 1779 the Dissenters, out of regard to fellow-citizens engaged in the same civil conflict, ceased to press so earnestly for remaining rights. But they had not forgotten them and were impatient that the legisla- ture still tolerated irregularities. In 1784 petitions again poured in, praying "that the legislature will do away with all such distinctions and secure their future and religious freedom upon the broad basis of perfect political equality. ' '
KELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 479
Support of Religion by the State.
From the beginning of the struggle for separa- tion of church and state some of the citizens seem to have favored the state's providing for a general assessment to support all sects. The decadence of religion in the presence of spreading French infidel- ity occasioned doubt in the minds of liberal states- men as to the propriety of the non-support of religions by the state. Patrick Henry was an advo- cate for a general assessment to support the sev- eral Christian denominations. It came to be feared that some kind of assessment would be demanded by the majority of the citizens and possibly pass the legislature. Under these circumstances Hanover Presbytery, after re-establishing the distinction between the civil and religious spheres, and setting forth in implications the view that they entertained of their proper relations, and declaring that an assessment was not needed, undertook to show that a general assessment to be tolerable must be broad enough for the support, not only of all Christian sects, but Mohammedans, etc.
They were not satisfied with such an assessment as Mr. Henry proposed. Even this cautious position gave intense dissatisfaction to the Presbyterian peo- ple and the Presbytery itself, unless James Waddell be the exception. The Presbytery was sharply inter- rogated at its next meeting, May 19, 1785, as to its meaning in the memorial of October, 1784; was asked whether it approved any kind of assessment by the legislature in support of religion; and answered unanimously that it did not. l 1 The people of the back counties," chiefly Presbyterians, were warm in opposition to the general assessment pro- posed; and did not "scruple to declare it an alarm- ing usurpation on their fundamental rights; and
480 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
that, though the General Assembly should give it the form, they would not give the validity of law." A Presbyterian convention met at Bethel in August, 1785, prepared a memorial and sent it forth for signers — a paper which again sets forth, in noble fashion, the views previously embodied in their memorials of 1776 and 1777, in which they had antic- ipated Mr. Jefferson's bill; and expresses opposition to any assessment for religion.
The Baptists maintained a staunch and consistent position of hostility to the general assessment throughout the years of struggle, and petitioned repeatedly for the establishment of religious free- dom; and because of their considerable numbers and their holding the balance of power in many counties were largely influential. Under the stimu- lus of the rising opposition Mr. Madison, whom Witherspoon had imbued with his theological lore, political philosophy and practical spirit, discussed the question of an Establishment of religion from every point of view and with consummate power, in his masterly "Memorial and Remonstrance" to the legislature against the bill. His paper, diffused widely throughout the state, heightened the opposi- tion. When the Assembly met in October, 1785, the table in the House of Delegates almost sank under the memorials from counties, denominations and communities. The Assessment was doomed. On December 17, the bill entitled "An Act for the Estab- lishment of Religious Freedom" passed the House. It was, with some mutilations in the preamble, Mr. Jefferson's bill, denying that a man's civil capacities are conditioned by his religious opinions, and exempting the citizen from every form of civil penalty on account of his religious convictions.
The principles of this statute were carried by
KELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 481
James Madison, pushed by Patrick Henry into the constitution of the United States, by its first amend- ment, which contains the provision that " Congress shall make no law concerning the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
The neutral religious character of the constitution of the United States has co-worked with the influ- ence which availed to give it this character to lend a similar character to the constitution of all the other states of the Union. "The separation of church and state by the establishment of religious equality was followed by the wonderful result that it was approved of everywhere, always and by all." No superior addition to American civilization has been wrought out in any state or section of the Union.
This principle the South has maintained with general consistency from the time of its establish- ment till the present. Not even during the War of Secession did she forget the separateness of the two spheres, as was done within the states north of the Mason and Dixon line.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Bancroft, George: History of the United States; Bowen, L. P.: Days of Makemie ; Briggs, C. A.: American Presby- terianism; Burke: History of Virginia; Davies, Eev. Samuel: Ser- mons; Fiske, John: Old Virginia and Her Neighbors; Foote, Win. H. : Sketches of North Carolina, Sketches of Virginia; Force, Peter: Tracts (Washington, 1846); Hallam, Henry: Constitutional History of England; Hawks, E. L. : A Narrative of Events Connected with the Rise and Progress of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Vir- ginia, Contributions to Ecclesiastical History of the United States; Hening : Statutes at Large; Henry, Wm. Wirt ; Life, Correspond- ence and Speeches of Patrick Henry ; James, Charles F. : The Struggle •for Religious Liberty in Virginia; Jefferson, Thomas: Works; John- son, Thos, Gary: Virginia Presbyterianism and Eeligious Liberty; Mather, Eev. Cotton: Magnolia; McCrady: South Carolina; Neill, E. D. : Virginia Carolorum, "Records of the Presbyterian Church; Bives, Wm. C.: Life and Times of James Madison; Semple, Eobert B. : History of the Else and Progress of Baptists in Virginia; Thorn, Wm. T. : The Struggle for "Religious Freedom in Virginia, The Bap- tists; Virginia State Library: Journal of House of Delegates, etc.,
Vol. 10—31
482 RELIGIOUS LIFE OP THE SOUTH.
Memorials (manuscript originals) of religious and civil bodies to the House of Burgesses and to the Legislature; Whitsitt, Wm. H.: Life and Times of Judge Caleb Wallace; Winsor, Justin: Narrative and Critical History of America.
THOMAS GARY JOHNSON,
Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Polity, Union Theo- logical Seminary of 1'iryinia, Eichmond, Va.
CHAPTER V.
THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIA- TION IN RELATION TO THE DEVEL- OPMENT OF THE SOUTH.
History and Work of the Association.
[E history of any people or any time is not fully told until the story of its religious development is laid bare. Whether or not a man is a so-called religionist, if he is true to the spirit of history he must recognize that religion is so fundamental a part of the life of man- kind that it has entered into his every deed, political, social, or otherwise. This being true, the story of the development of the South would be incomplete without some word about the part which the Young Men's Christian Association has played in this development.
The first Young Men's Christian Association in America was organized at Montreal, Canada, Dec. 9, 1851, and the first in the United States was at Boston, Mass., just twenty days later. From these two points as centres the movement spread rap- idly to all parts of the country, including the South. An association was organized in New Orleans, La.,
Y. M. C. A. IN THE SOUTH. 483
Nov. 23, 1852, with 178 charter members, which was so very prosperous that in 1854 it was publishing a monthly paper, The Companion.
The Association was organized at Alexandria, Va., January, 1853; at Louisville, Ky., July 12, 1853; Lexington, Ky., Nov. 21, 1853; Charleston, S. C., March 6, 1854; Richmond, Va., Dec. 19, 1854. At the opening of the War of Secession there were probably fifty associations in existence in the South- ern states. Practically all of these went down in the crisis of that awful period, only a few carrying on during the war period a work for the soldiers as well as a work for the men of their own community.
The work of the Association at this period was poorly defined, even in the minds of the leaders themselves. There were three conflicting opinions about the mission and work of the organization.
First, there were those — a small but influential minority — who felt the Church had failed, that sec- tionalism and denominationalism had robbed it of power, and that a new Church without divisions must be raised up to bear the message of Christian- ity. This party looked to the Association as the unified organization which should bear this message.
The second party, a goodly majority, believed that the Association must be loyal to the Church, but also believed that the mission was to all classes, even as was the mission of the Church. Their motto was 1 'The young men at work for all classes."
The third party — a minority, but fortunately a strong and growing one — believed that the Associa- tion must be loyal to the Church, must work in cooperation with it, but must specialize in its work, having as its motto what was later put into terse
484 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
words by Cephas Brainard, "A work by young men and for young men. ' '
As a result of such conflicting ideas, the work of the Association during these early days was of a most desultory character. It had no unity of plan. The Association at Louisville, Ky., was organized with the direct and stated purpose of pushing a campaign for Sabbath observance. It grew out of the Sabbath conditions consequent upon a large influx of foreign population, and for many years this idea dominated its whole work.
The chief work of the Mobile Association seems to have been that of visiting and caring for the sick, and carrying forward a work of colportage. An important part of the work of the New Orleans Association was the founding of a library of religious and theological books, partly at least for the aid it would be to the pastors of the various churches. The Association at Alexandria spent a goodly portion of its money and energy as a relief association for the poor.
In the midst of such disorganized ideas a leader came forward — William Chauncey Langdon, of Washington, afterwards an Episcopalian mission- ary— and drew all the Associations together into a Federation, the purpose of which was to unify the work, and secure a more intimate relationship among the widely scattered branches. In this Fed- eration the Southern Association took a most impor- tant part. To the first meeting, held at Buffalo, N. Y., June 7, 1854, New Orleans, Louisville and Lexington, Ky., sent delegates, Mr. Geo. W. Helme. of New Orleans, being elected president of the convention.
At this meeting articles of Federation were drawn up, which were to become binding as soon as twen-
Y. M. C. A. IN THE SOUTH. 485
ty-two local Associations had ratified them. Of the first twenty-two ratifying these articles, six were Southern Associations, and two, Washington and Georgetown, D. C., were as much Southern as North- ern. The important part which the Southern Asso- ciations took in the early work of the Association organization is indicated by the fact that three of the seven conventions of the Federation held between the time of its organization and the opening of the war convened in Southern cities, Bichmond, Va., 1857 ; Charleston, S. C., 1858, and New Orleans, La., 1860.
One other event of importance in this ante-bellum period deserves mention. The first Student Young Men's Christian Association in the world was organ- ized at the University of Virginia, Oct. 12, 1858. The Association enrolled during that college year 112 members and reported an average attendance of 200 at its regular weekly meetings, fifty students engaged in religious work outside tLe college com- munity, four large Bible classes ^ere conducted, and a work done which in a true sense foreshadowed the future work of the college Associations.
The stirring events of 1861 and the complete absorption of men in them, together with the fact that practically every able-bodied man in the South volunteered for service in the army, meant the com- plete collapse of most of the Southern Associations. When the smoke of battle cleared and the weary sol- diers found their way home, the first thought was to care for the necessities of life ; hence years elapsed before many of the Associations were reorganized. The Association at Charleston, S. C., was reorgan- ized in 1867, that of New Orleans in 1871, and many others were longer delayed.
In 1870 William F. Lee. a member of the Inter-
486 EELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
national Committee, and George A. Hall, secretary of the Washington Association, made a tour of the South to reorganize old Associations and stimulate those already in existence. In 1875-76 Mr. Hall, accompanied by Thomas K. Cree, made a second and third tour.
The convention of 1877 was held in Louisville, Ky., and was made memorable by the organization of a student department of the international work in which were brought together the local organziations of the American colleges.
The work of the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion for the colored people was the direct outcome of Southern interest and initiative. At the Toronto convention in 1876, Dr. Stuart Robinson, of Louis- ville, Ky., led the discussion, and made the first contribution to place a secretary in the field to develop this work.
It will readily be seen from the foregoing state- ments that the Southern Associations have had no small part in the moulding of the policies and the development of the Association's ideals.
In 1908 there were in the South seventy-four city Associations with a membership of 27,065, and a large working force of committeemen. Most of these Associations now own their own buildings.
The Eailroad department has forty-four organi- zations in the South, with 22,010 members. This department furnishes almost the only religious influence in the lives of these men, holding meetings among them at the noon hours, organizing travel- ing Bible classes, and through its rest rooms and amusement halls providing the best moral influences.
The colored department of the Association, which, in the nature of the case, is confined largely to the South, reported in 1908 thirty-seven city Associa-
Y. M. C. A. IN THE SOUTH. [ 487
tions -with a membership of 5,000 — eighty-nine stu- dent Associations in colleges enrolling 11,000 men (approximately), fifty of which Associations enrolled 4,955 men as Association members.
No other department has shown more marked development than has the work among students. There are 187 organizations in the Southern institu- tions of learning, enrolling 9,907 men in Bible classes, training 900 men yearly in the teaching of these classes, and sending 500 men to the ten-day confer- ences of the Association, that they may be trained in methods of Christian work.
Out of the rapidly increasing wealth of once pov- erty-stricken and war-destroyed sections, the Asso- ciation has received a generous share of the gifts of the benevolent and now owns property valued at nearly $5,000,000.
Contributions of the Young Men's Christian Associations to the Religious Life of the South.
On the other hand, the Association has made dis- tinct contributions to the development of the relig- ious life of the South and of the Nation. The first of these is the unifying element it has brought into the churches. As early as 1856 a letter from Knoxville, Tenn., printed in the official organ of the American Associations, The Quarterly Reporter, declared : ' i Since the establishment of the Associa- tion, sectarian and denominational zeal seem to have been merged into a pure, warm-hearted love for one another, as fellow disciples, and this spirit has been carried into our various churches, producing a pleas- ant and cordial Christian esteem and affection in each toward all." In 1870 Dr. Veranus Morse, of New York city, wrote: "The Association, as an agency of the Church, has furnished a practical
488 EELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
example of Christian union, the Christian denomina- tions standing together, not on a carefully worded platform of compromises, but on the simple, solid ground of work for the Master."
The second great contribution of the Association to the religious life of the South has been the unify- ing of morals and religion. "One of the greatest and hardest discoveries of the human mind," says Dr. Josiah Eoyce, "has been the discovery of how to reccncile, not religion and science, but religion and morality." If anywhere this reconciliation needed to be made, it was in the land of the courte- ous, well-bred, pleasure-loving cavalier. Here, if anywhere, churchmanship would easily be a work of respectability, and every gentleman must be respectable, whether he is moral or not. Toward the solution of this problem the Young Men's Chris- tian Association has brought a most vital message. This message has not been a system of philosophy, but a form, of service. The Association is an organi- zation of the manly to save the whole man. It is not satisfied until every phase of the life is shot through with the spirit of morality, and experience has taught that the one power of moral motive is the Christ life. Thus, by the bringing of the relig- ious spirit into every-day life, by setting the Christ ideal for the work of the week as well as for the worship of Sunday, by the bringing of this message to men through their fellow men, this reconciliation of morals and religion has been greatly progressed.
The third contribution of the Association has been the training of the lay workers in the Church. In this the student work has probably stood preeminent. During the year 1908 there were 9,907 men students enrolled in the voluntary Bible classes of the Stu- dent Young Men's Christian Associations of the
Y. M. C. A. IX THE SOUTH. 489
South. Some 900 college students led the small group classes in which these men were enrolled. Thus, at least 900 men were being trained in the teaching of Bible classes. Such men have gone out from year to year to become superintendents of Sunday-schools, teachers of Bible classes and officers in the local church. A similar group of men are being trained in the leading of mission study classes. Hundreds of others are trained in the various phases of organization through their service as officers of the Association and their work as members of com- mittees. This is a contribution, the value of which can never be tabulated in statistics, but is none the less far-reaching.
The fourth contribution of the Association to religious development lies in its method of work. This method is that of personal dealing with indi- vidual men. The tendency of religious leaders has too often been to rely on the public preaching in order to reach men. But the Association, being com- posed largely of business men, early understood the merits of talking with a man face to face, just as it is necessary to send a personal representative to sell goods, rather than a letter. This method of work was the heart of the early Association organization. Sir George Williams, in founding the first Associa- tion in London, made this the centre of all work. Men in the drapery store of Mr. Hitchcock were inspired to deal personally with their fellow clerks, and thus many were led into a better life. The Association in America has been true to this tradi- tion. Hundreds of personal workers bands have been organized, thousands of men have been put to work, and the result has been the upbuilding of moral life for both Christian and non-CHristian men. Now this form of service has found its wav into
490 ' RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
the various churches and in not a few of them has been a most revolutionary power. If one would dare to prophesy, he would be tempted to say that this form of Christian service will have increasingly a part to play in the bringing of the message of moral and religious life to all men, and it is a dis- tinctly Young Men's Christian Association method. Another contribution of this movement has been to the social and physical life of young men. Some one has said, "The Young Men's Christian Associa- tion is the first religious organization to recognize the sacredness of the whole man." "Whether it be the first is no matter; it does recognize that a man is not saved until he is saved socially and physically, as well as spiritually. The social life of the young men of our cities is guarded by furnishing elegant buildings, in which there is an air of homelikeness, and where young men may meet for social inter- course under wholesome and moral conditions. The physical life is guarded by the gymnasiums, with their skilled physical directors. No greater service can be rendered the young men of our modern cities than this. The intense pressure of business life, the nervous wear and tear of intense application amid a thousand distractions, together with the strain of sedentary and indoor life, make some form of physical exercise almost imperative. This the gymnasium of the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion offers. Not only so, but in scores of our Ameri- can cities, the baths of the Young Men's Christian Association are the only ones accessible to great masses of young business men who do not have homes. Thus the Association is contributing in no small way to the social and health conditions of the nation and thus indirectly making for righteous- ness, for its workers believe that no soul can keep
Y. M. C. A. IN THE SOUTH. 491
clean which does not live in a clean body and in the midst of a clean environment.
Lastly, the Young Men's Christian Association is making a contribution to the moral life of the sec- tion through its manly appeal for the straightfor- ward Christian life. Through its channels hun- dreds of men have been led into a personal accept- ance of Christianity, and have been influenced to unite with the Church. While the Association is a movement for the saving of the whole man, it stands none the less squarely for genuine Christian life as expressed in the life and character of Jesus Christ.
Thus it will be seen that the Association has been, and in increasing ratio now is, contributing to the best life of the section through its unifying influ- ence over the various churches; in its blending of moral and religious life; in its training of large numbers of men for service in the Church; in its method of personal work, and in its intense convic- tion that moral life can best be found through a per- sonal religious life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Morse, Richard C.: Fifty Tears of Federation; Morse, Veranus: First Fifty Years of Young Men's Christian Asso- ciations in North America; The Association Hand Boole (pub. by Internationl Committee Young Men's Christian Associations); Files of The Companion, Quarterly Eeporter, Intercollegian and Associa- tion Men (in the Library in the International Association Building, New York) ; College Problems (series 1 and 2, Methodist Publishing House, Nashville, Tenn.).
W. D. WEATHERFORD,
Student Secretary International Committee Young Men's Christian Associations.
492 EELIG10US LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER VI.
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL IN THE HISTORY OF THE SOUTH.
Early Southern Idea of Sunday School.
''HE Sunday school idea as it originated in England found two lines of development: first, that of holding a school for secular instruction on Sunday; and second, that of having a Bible school on Sunday. It was this latter development of Sunday school work that found favor in America. From the beginning, save in isolated cases, the Sunday school in America has been a church school for Bible instruction. So far as the records show, it has always been this in the South. The Sunday school can hardly be said to have held the same relative place in Southern religious life as it manifestly did in the life of the East, that is, until modern times. The dominant popular religious forces in the South since the Revo- lution have always been the Baptists and Meth- odists, and both of these great bodies have laid their primary emphasis upon preaching. It is only in recent years that the Sunday school has come to its own.
It is altogether probable that the first Sunday school impulse in the South is to be traced directly to Wesley. Wesley was prompt to recognize in the Sunday school a great agency for the propagation of religion. He was one of the first to recognize that its great power was to come through a volun- tary rather than a paid staff of teachers, and was one of the first to make it a part of the program of
SUNDAY SCHOOLS IN THE SOUTH. 493
the churches which he established. Wesley's con- nection with Georgia undoubtedly sowed the seed in the minds of the early Methodists of the South.
The early years of the Nineteenth century show beginnings in so many places that these can hardly be traced to any one source. It is hardly likely that the conditions in the South made the progress at the beginning anything like that in other sections of the country, where population was already gath- ering in cities. So far as conditions permitted, how- ever, the new idea found ready acceptance, and a number of Sunday schools came into existence in the South in the very earliest days of the Nineteenth century.
Work of the Sunday School Union.
Up to 1845 and 1846 religious work in the South- was allied with the denominational bodies of the North. The work of Baptists, Methodists and Pres- byterians was during this time simply a part of the general history of the country. The conditions, however, were peculiar. The great churches of this period in the South were in the country. The plea for home missions was then made with the rich country churches, that the money might be expended in the towns and cities. These great country churches did not furnish a ready field for Sunday school workers. The preachers were men of great ability and far reaching influence, and the stress was laid upon preaching services. Yet the records show a far reaching interest in the Sunday school, and wherever the missionaries journeyed it became part of their work to establish a Sunday school. It was during this period that the Sunday School Union, of Philadelphia, was the potent agency for Sunday school extension throughout America. It was organ- ized in 1824, with its headquarters in Philadelphia,
494 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
and only six years later, in May, 1830, began the great Mississippi Valley campaign for Sunday school organization. This reached into the territory of the middle South. In 1833 a similar campaign was projected for the Southern states, but this last campaign does not seem to have met with popular favor in these states. The Sunday School Union continued, however, during this and later periods, to keep in the Southern field a force of Sunday school missionaries whose great task has always been to organize union schools in the remote and destitute regions.
It does not seem that the efforts of the Sunday School Union made any great impression upon the dominating religious influences of the South. Not in the same degree, certainly, as the effort to secure money for the campaign did in the North. The work of the Sunday School Union, however, was of great value, especially in the pioneer sections. Thousands of Sunday schools were organized where no other religious advantages could be found.
Slavery Question a Factor in Religious Life of South.
The early religious life of the South underwent a great change in the middle forties. The agitation of the slavery question and its application to religious relationships brought about the organization of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845, and of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1846. Neither of these was brought about by the war, but came from great underlying causes that ultimately did lead also to an attempted political division. After this time it was practically impossible for organizations having their centre in other sections of the country to work in the South. Neither of these two general bodies gave much atten- tion to organized work for Sunday school extension
SUNDAY SCHOOLS IN THE SOUTH. 495
until about tlie time of the war. This was not unnatural. They were compelled to equip them- selves for missionary activity and they could not organize along all lines at once. But there never was a time when they were unmindful of the great value of the Sunday school. Some reports on this subject show wisdom and penetration that we do little more than equal in our own time. Among the Baptists and Methodists the Sunday school idea was firmly in the minds of, and was vigorously pushed by, men who in after years became famous as great religious leaders. Dr. John A. Broadus with his colleague Dr. Basil Manly, Jr., was one of the first to interest himself in these matters, and he gloried in the fact that he once edited a child's paper. Bishop Haygood was a pioneer among Southern Methodists. The mission boards during this period were very active in Sunday school organ- ization and their annual reports show a great num- ber of Sunday schools organized. When the war broke out matters were just coming to a place where something worth while could have been done, and there were men who had set their hearts upon doing it.
Especial attention is given to the reports before these bodies as to the value of the Sunday school for the negro slaves. The missionaries were urged to persuade masters to provide Sunday schools for the negroes. It was general during this period for the negro slaves to belong to the same church as their white masters. In these churches they were treated as equals in every way in all matters per- taining to salvation. Separate Sunday schools seem to have been comparatively rare, although "Stone- wall" Jackson taught in such a school. On many plantations, however, the master or mistress
496 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
instructed the slaves. Such instruction was of necessity oral, as the slaves were not, save in rare cases, taught to read.
The War of Secession a Hindrance to Sunday School Work.
During the' war little could be done. The country was largely depopulated of its men. It was almost impossible to get Sunday school missionaries, as the demand for preachers was far beyond the sup- ply. On the borders the Sunday School Union mis- sionaries were working, but this was not possible in the heart of the South. Yet the Baptists began their first concerted movement for this kind of work in the latter days of the war. There was a great demand for literature and for Sunday school prim- ers and question books. Though the facilities for distribution were sadly ineffective, and the territory restricted, yet large quantities of these supplies were distributed. Until the days when all hope for the Southern cause had to be abandoned, the far- sighted religious leaders among Baptists and Meth- odists were preparing for a vigorous Sunday school campaign for the children of the new Confederacy. Some of the reports and papers published at this time show all the grasp and penetration of the most advanced of modern Sunday school experts. That the Sunday school in the fertile religious soil of the South did not quickly reach its most advanced de- velopment was due to the wreck and ruin of the days of disaster when the war ended. Men of vision in all lines of work then had to wait until the foun- dations were laid again for society, and only the essential things could be done. The Sunday school had to wait, as did many other things.
In the days after the war little was or could be done. Churches must be reopened, preachers were scarce, the country was unsafe, political conditions
SUNDAY SCHOOLS IN THE SOUTH. 497
were unsettled. Gradually religious leaders began to give attention to the Sunday school as an agency that could be operated by neighbors and friends. Efforts with the best of motives were made by great societies in the North to advance the work of organ- izing Sunday schools, but these efforts had little suc- cess, save in remote districts. Immediately after the war there began that great movement of the blacks to form churches of their own. In these churches the spirit of imitation led to the organiza- tion of Sunday schools, and Northern missionary effort helped this on. In many states denomina- tional and interdenominational societies conducted more or less systematic campaigns for Sunday school extension. But in the country districts this was difficult. Danger, distance, and bad roads made the work spasmodic and imperfect. Yet, as always, the Sunday school was the most effective of pioneer agencies, and in the remote regions it went ahead of the churches and did the work of the day schools as well. Leaders were interested during this period, the Sunday school was urged, literature was pro- vided, but the results were not remarkable.
International Uniform Lesson System Adopted.
The great advance in the Sunday school move- ment in America came with the adoption of the International Uniform Lesson System in 1872. No Southern man had place on the first lesson com- mittee, but the uniform lessons were soon adopted by all denominations in the South. The second lesson committee was appointed at a great session of the International Sunday School Convention which met in Atlanta in 1878. This was the first of the great national bodies to meet in the South after the war. It was counted a great event by its pro- jectors, and one who participated says of it "that
Tol. 10—32
498 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
nothing since the war has done so much to promote good feeling between the sections as this conven- tion." Its influence was no doubt great. Three Southern men, Dr. B. M. Palmer, Presbyterian, Dr. John A. Broadus, Baptist, and Dr. W. G. E. Cun- nyngham, Methodist, were made members of the committee. The very names of these men gave an impetus to the new cause in the South, for they are the names of three wise and gracious leaders of real power. No doubt the convention helped the Sunday school cause as much by appointing these men as by any direct influence, for it is difficult to find any direct results from the great meeting.
Denominational Work.
The International Sunday School Association, working through local interdenominational organ- izations in the states, has never gained the hold in the South that it has in the West, and to some extent in the East. Denominational feeling is more vital and intense, while the strange and mysterious, but beautiful solidarity in the South which makes it a section in spirit and fellowship even more positively than do geographical lines, has always made organ- ized religious work more effective when conducted by Southern organizations. The most potent influ- ences also in religion in the South are still denom- inational. So the great progress in Sunday school work has come, and still comes, through denom- inational effort working in the South as a section, rather than from interdenominational, local, or Northern organizations. The Methodists began their systematic work in 1870, the Baptists in 1890, and the Presbyterians about 1901, although the two latter bodies had for many years issued periodicals under the care of missionary organizations. Each of these denominations now carries on an extensive
SUNDAY SCHOOLS IN THE SOUTH. 499
field work which has great force because in the life of the South the influence of these Southern organ- izations is vital among the people. The progress of Sunday school work in the South is to be looked for along denominational lines rather than through in- terdenominational, and this progress is manifest all along the line. As has been true everywhere else the Sunday school work and the publishing of books have been combined, and great and growing publish- ing houses are maintained by the Southern Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians, the first two at Nashville, and the latter at Richmond.
Sunday Schools Among Negroes.
It remains but to say a word or two as to the Sun- day school among the negroes. At the present this has not brought about any great results, save that the Sunday school has become general among them. To use the Sunday school to the best advantage of the race is now the problem. It is a source of gratifi- cation that the uniform lesson gives them a common touch with their white brethren and this is a bond not to be lightly esteemed. Practically all negro Sunday schools now patronize negro publishing houses and have Sunday school periodicals pre- pared by negroes. This is as it should be. It results in a more direct application of the Bible to the needs of the race and enables their leaders to direct their people in common movements. Another result has been to develop publishing houses of their own, which in turn become agencies for Sunday school development. To most men familiar with existing conditions the way upward for the negro is to be found under the leadership of his own race, and this is true in the Sunday school as in other things. Cer- tain it is that it can be done by no one else. Most of the work so far attempted for the negro by the Inter-
500 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
national Sunday School Association has been futile, largely because it has overlooked the existing negro agencies and the dominant denominationalism of the negro. Recent efforts to interest the negro schools and to gain the support of the denominational leaders, in a campaign to impress upon the race the need of using to the full the Sunday school, gives much greater promise of success. The Sunday school promises to be a factor second to none in the religious development of the negro. And as an agency the Sunday school will nowhere be of greater service than to the negro race at the present time. It is, and must be, largely the hope of securing a generation of negroes with intelligent conceptions of religion among the average members of the race.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Few, if any, books can be recommended. Brown's Sunday School Movement in America gives surface facts and dates; the minutes of the Southern Baptist Convention (1845-1908) ; min- utes of General Conference, M. E. Church, South (Quadrennial since 1846); reports of Sunday School Union, Philadelphia; proceedings of International Sunday School Association (Triennial since 1842) are useful.
ISAAC J. VAN NESS,
Editorial Secretary Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.
CHAPTER VII.
THE LAYMEN'S MISSIONARY MOVEMENT IN THE SOUTH.
History of the Movement.
MONG the various organizations of the Christian young people of North America formed during the closing years of the Nine- teenth century, possibly none has been more productive of permanent good than the Student Vol- unteer Movement, organized in 1888. The watch- word adopted by this organization — "The evangeli-
THE LAYMEN'S MISSIONARY MOVEMENT. 501
zation of the world in this generation" — has always been its controlling motive. In February, 1906, the International Convention of this Movement was held in Nashville, Tennessee, with an attendance of over 3,000 students, representing 700 colleges and uni- versities in the United States and Canada. There were also present a number of returned mission- aries, editors of the religious papers of the coun- try, and secretaries of the various foreign mission boards. It was a meeting of great spiritual power, in which added emphasis was given to the under- lying principle of the Movement — the carrying of the gospel the world round in this generation. As the secretaries of the boards impressed upon the large student body the necessity of quadrupling the number of volunteers in the colleges of the coun- try for the foreign fields, and as the response thereto was quite general, there came to a Christian layman present a conviction that a forward step must be taken by the Church at large that would parallel this advanced movement on the part of the student volunteers.
In the carrying out of his conviction, this Chris- tian man had interviews with Mr. John R. Mott and other leaders of Christian thought and activity, and found them to be in full sympathy with the suggestion, and ready to cooperate in the inaugura- tion of such a movement. After several conferences on the subject, it was resolved to invite a number of laymen to meet together to further consider the mat- ter, and to take such action as their judgment might dictate. This meeting was held in the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian church, New York City, Nov. 15, 1906, following the day appointed for the celebration of the centennial of the Haystack Prayer Meeting, and somewhat as a sequence to that meeting. It was attended by a large number of men from New York
502 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
and surrounding cities, and the result of this meet- ing has become historic, for through it was born the Laymen's Missionary Movement.
Its scope was made plain in the resolutions adopted, setting forth the strong belief that the time had arrived when Christian men should give to the great subject of the evangelization of the world the same thought, concentration of effort and liberality which they are accustomed to bestow upon commercial and financial matters, and which has resulted in that marvelous success which has been as great a surprise to the people of North America as it has been to those of other countries. The definite purpose of the Movement was, in coopera- tion with existing organizations, to stimulate the thought and activity of Christian laymen to a more thorough consecration of their time, talents and material things, all the gifts of a bountiful Providence, to the evangelization of the world.
This purpose was tersely set forth in the resolu- tions adopted, which were as follows : (1) To project a campaign of education among laymen to be con- ducted under the direction of the various boards;
(2) To devise a comprehensive plan (in conjunction with the secretaries of said boards) looking toward the evangelization of the world in this generation;
(3) To endeavor to form, through the various boards, a Centennial Commission of Laymen, fifty or more in number, to visit as early as possible the mission fields and report their findings to the Church at home. The commission called for in the above resolution was duly appointed, and its members, at their own expense, have visited many of the for- eign mission fields, gaining valuable information as to the work being done, the great need for an increase in the number of workers, and the necessity for additional equipment.
THE LAYMEN'S MISSIONARY MOVEMENT. 503
The visits of these Christian men, a number of whom were accompanied by their wives, proved a stimulus to the missionaries they were privileged to meet, and to the work itself in the service they were enabled to render.
This movement met a quick response from laymen of different denominations of our own country, as also from those in Canada and Great Britain. Under the management of an energetic executive commit- tee, of which Mr. Samuel B. Capen, of Boston, was chosen chairman, and Mr. J. Campbell White, of New York, general secretary, meetings were held in various cities of the country where the definite pur- pose of the Movement was set forth, and where ini- tial steps were taken for its presentation to the lay- men of the churches generally. In no part of the country was there a more ready and prompt response to the underlying principles of the Move- ment than in the Southern states. In the fall of 1907 a series of meetings was held in the leading Southern cities addressed by the secretary, Mr. White, Mr. William T. Ellis, of Philadelphia, who had himself spent considerable time investigating mission work in the Far East, and by others.
These meetings helped greatly to strengthen the steps already taken for a practical application of the purposes of the Movement to the mission work of the leading denominations. It was not long, however, before it became evident that if the Move- ment was to continue a permanent force it must be through organized denominational agencies.
Southern Presbyterians.
The Presbyterian denomination was the first in the South to grasp this truth, and to act upon it. Under a call issued by a few of its leading members there gathered in Birmingham, Alabama, May 14
504 EELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
and 15, 1907, thirty representative laymen who organized the Laymen's Missionary Movement of the Southern Presbyterian Church, with Mr. Charles A. Eowland, of Georgia, a member of the general committee, as chairman of its executive committee, and Mr. H. C. Ostrom as secretary. As the work developed, Mr. Charles H. Pratt was added to the secretarial force. This action promptly received the endorsement of the General Assembly of the Church. Several conferences and synodical meetings were held under the auspices of the committee, at which the purposes of the Movement were clearly set forth, as speakers of note discussed the subject of "The Mission of the Church, and the Obligation of Christian Laymen." In one of the gatherings thus held, a leading business man was so aroused by the presentation of the opening opportunity in Korea, that he pledged $10,000 for a college for that country. This committee adopted as its motto for the Movement : ' ' All at it and always at it ; a mil- lion annually for missions." To secure this large sum of money, an amount greatly in excess of the previous year's contribution, the committee set itself to a thorough organization of the Movement within the denomination. The committee itself was enlarged to one hundred members, composed mainly of lead- ing representatives from the eighty or more Pres- byteries in the denomination. Every member of the committee was expected to secure the appointment of an interested layman in the various congrega- tions in his Presbytery to act as the leader in the men's missionary activities of his individual church. The committee also decided to secure the names of all men in the various churches of the denomina- tion to whom literature could be sent. This was quite an undertaking, but already nearly twenty thousand have been enrolled, representing about
THE LAYMEN'S MISSIOXAKY MOVEMENT. 505
one-fourth of the entire number desired. The com- mittee has published some especially prepared leaf- lets bearing on the purposes of the Movement. One of these, entitled, "The King's Business and Busi- ness Men," has been of great service in interest- ing business men in the Movement.
Southern Baptists.
Included in the membership of the General Com- mittee organizing the Laymen's Missionary Move- ment were a number of men from the South, and among them several Baptists. Two of these, feeling the importance of the underlying principles of the Movement, issued a call May 1, 1907, to the Baptist laymen of the South to meet in Richmond, Virginia, on the 16th of that month for the consideration of the Movement, with special reference to its relation to the denomination. The day appointed for the conference was the one preceding the annual meet- ing of the Southern Baptist Convention, held in the same city. This fact contributed materially in bringing together a representative gathering in response to the call. At this conference addresses were made by several of the leading laymen of the denomination, and by Mr. J. Campbell White, the general secretary of the Movement, whose statement of its origin and purpose was heard with great inter- est and profit. Before adjourning, and with much earnestness of purpose, resolutions were passed approving the Movement and appointing a com- mittee to present the matter to the convention. Its statement met with a most favorable reception by the members of the convention, and its recommenda- tion for the appointment of an executive commit- tee to be located in Baltimore was enthusiastically adopted. The commitee thus appointed elected Mr. J. Harry Tyler, chairman, and at a later period,
506 EELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
Prof. J. T. Henderson, of Bristol, Tennessee, as field secretary. The purpose of the committee has been to form an organization of laymen in the various state conventions and district associations through which a comprehensive presentation of the Movement might be given to the membership of the individual churches. This is being accomplished through the efforts of the field secretary and the committee, and it is hoped every state will have an organization, with its committees successfully at work, before the succeeding meeting of the conven- tion. Owing to the extended territory included in the bounds of the Southern Baptist Convention, much of it still unevangelized, it was decided by the convention in Richmond that the scope of the execu- tive committee's work should include home as well as foreign missions. While this action was some- what at variance with the purposes of the Laymen's Missionary Movement as originally organized, which were to confine its efforts to the extension of mission work in foreign lands, the uniqueness and wide extent of the Southern field seem to render this action necessary. In doing this, however, the con- vention was but following the course already taken by the various denominations in Canada, where similar conditions prevail. The committee has issued a number of tracts bearing on the subject of world missions, has used the columns of the religious jour- nals in explanation of the Movement, and held meet- ings in some of the principal cities in its interest. Through these and other efforts the confident hope is indulged that the receipts of the home and foreign boards will show a large annual increase until the offerings of Southern Baptists for worldwide mis- sions shall, in a measure at least, equal their responsibility and their opportunity.
THE LAYMEN'S MISSIONARY MOVEMENT. 507
Southern Methodists.
While the spirit of this movement had thus early made its impress upon the missionary activities of the two denominations mentioned, the remaining one of the three leading Protestant bodies of the South, the Methodists, had not been indifferent to the prin- ciples and possibilities involved in it. Pursuant to a call by its Board of Missions there assembled in Knoxville, Tennessee, Oct. 7, 1907, fifty-three lay- men from twelve different states of the South. The purpose of this gathering was, as stated in the call, "to launch the Laymen's Missionary Movement in our church, and to provide for a great laymen's meeting." At this gathering an executive commit- tee was elected, of which Mr. John E. Pepper, of Nashville, also a member of the general committee, was chosen chairman, and Mr. G. W. Cain, secretary. After due deliberation the committee decided upon Chattanooga as the place, and April 21-23, 1908, as the time for holding the first conference of the Lay- men's Missionary Movement of the Methodist Epis- copal Church South. This conference assembled at time and place designated, and proved to be a meet- ing wherein the .high- water mark of missionary enthusiasm and interest was reached. The delegates, numbering a thousand or more, represented all sec- tions of the South. Among the noted speakers who addressed the conference were Ambassador James Bryce, Great Britain's ambassador to the United States; Dr. Josiah Strong, of New York; William T. Ellis, of Pennsylvania ; Samuel B. Capen, chair- man; and J. Campbell White, secretary of the gen- eral committee, and also many of the prominent leaders of the Church. The conference subscribed on the spot $15,000 for the salary of the secretary and other expenses of the Movement for two years.
508 EELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
It voted with great unanimity to have the denomina- tion increase its contribution to missions from $750,- 000 to $1,000,000 for this year, to $1,500,000 for the next year, and in like proportion for each year there- after until a total of $3,000,000 yearly shall be con- tributed. Steps were also taken to organize the ten thousand physicians among their membership into a Medical Missionary Society, with a view of strengthening and greatly enlarging the work of medical missionaries on the foreign field.
Thus has the underlying principle of the Lay- men's Missionary Movement taken a firm hold on the hearts and consciences of the leading laymen of the three denominations which compose so large a proportion of evangelical Christianity in the South- ern states That the Movement, as thus organized, will grow rapidly and become a great factor in the spread of the Redeemer's Kingdom on earth can hardly admit of a doubt, and especially as standing back of it, and working in cordial sympathy and cooperation with it, are the regular organized mis- sionary agencies of the respective denominations. While the work will thus progress along denomina- tional lines, there being no organic union contem- plated, there will be a spirit of harmony and coop- eration whenever and wherever needful. In the furtherance of this spirit a great interdenomina- tional gathering in the interest of the Movement was held in Atlanta, Georgia, Dec. 3-7, 1908.
This meeting proved to be one of much interest and power, though owing to some local conditions was not as well attended as was hoped for. The practical outcome of it was the formation of the Southern Council of the Laymen's Missionary Movement, consisting of the members of the execu- tive committees of the Baptist, Methodist, Presby- terian, Associate Reformed Presbyterian and Luth-
THE SOUTHERN PULPIT. £09
eran Laymen's Missionary Movements. Mr. John K. Pepper of Memphis was elected president of this council, and Mr. Charles M. Pratt of Athens, Ga., secretary. The Southern Laymen's Movements are now in a position to act as a unit just as the various Movements in Canada are now doing.
BIBLIOGBAPHY. — No works of real value have as yet been published on the subject. The facts contained herein are largely based on personal knowledge. Some of the facts pertaining to the Presby- terian Movement were obtained from a pamphlet issued by the offi- cers of the executive committee of that body entitled Summary of the First Year of the Laymen 's Missionary Movement, Presbyterian Church, U. S. For the facts concerning the work among Southern Methodists, consult the issue of the general periodical Go Forward for June, 1908, which was especially the laymen's missionary con- ference number.
JOSHUA LEVERING,
Baltimore, Md.
CHAPTER VIII. THE SOUTHERN PULPIT.
HE priesthood of any nation is the best exponent of its moral life. The pulpit both makes and manifests the highest sentiments and aspirations of the people who wait upon its ministry. "Like people, like priest," truly saith the prophet Hosea. Judged by this test the inhabi- tants of that part or the United States called "The South" have been a notably religious people from colonial times unto the present hour.
Dr. Robert Baircl in his monumental work entitled Religion of America, says: "It is remarkable that in every charter granted to the Southern colonies, 'the propagation of the gospel' is mentioned as one of the reasons for undertaking the planting of them." The Christian purpose thus expressed in
510 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
their colonial charters has permeated all the subse- quent history of the Southern people, and it is not yet a spent force among them.
Keligion in the South.
In no other section of the United States — if indeed, we may not say the English-speaking world — does the membership of the churches include so large a proportion of the adult population. Nowhere else is the Christian Sabbath so well observed, and no- where else are religious services so generally at- tended Skepticism is not prevalent in the South, and rationalistic types of faith are accepted by very few of the people.
The South is the stronghold of orthodox Chris- tianity. The churches which have won the greatest number of followers are the Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and the Church which took its rise in the ministry of Alexander Campbell, commonly called "the Christian Church." The Protestant Episcopal Church and the Eoman Catholic Church have numerous communicants in the cities, but their following is not large in the rural districts, where most of the Southern people reside. This statement does not apply to the former Church as it is found in some parts of Virginia and the Carolinas, nor to the latter in Louisiana and the Latin settlements of the southwest. In the main, however, the unritualis- tic and evangelistic Churches hold the great rural population of the South.
But in both urban and rural districts, among all the Southern people without regard to the Church to which they are attached, orthodoxy is in high esteem and heterodoxy is at a heavy discount. The Bible is accepted as the word of God — the only suffi- cient rule of faith and practice, * ' so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is
THE SOUTHERN PULPIT. 511
not required of any man that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. ' ' Proclaiming this faith the Southern pulpit has won a larger proportion of the Southern people to the Churches than the pulpit of any other section of the country has won of the people to whom its appeals have been made.
And this is true without regard to "race, color or previous condition of servitude." The negro popu- lation of the South to a very large extent has been evangelized and Christianized. Without offering any defense of the institution of domestic slavery, it may be truly said that never since the days of the Apostles has a greater missionary work been done than was achieved among the negroes by the South- ern Churches before and during the war. Among the Southern negroes there are nearly, or quite, 4,000.000 church members — a result which could not be possible without the work of the Southern Churches done before the year 1860 and since. Since the war the Churches of the North have done much for the colored population of the South, both re- ligiously and educationally, and their work cannot be estimated too highly; but they have built on foundations laid by the Southern Churches in for- mer days, without which the results of their labors must have been much less than they have been. The security of Southern society during the war and during the darker days of reconstruction was the result in a great measure of the Christian faith which dwelt in the hearts of multitudes of the ne- groes. Prior to the war they heard the gospel from the lips of the same preachers to whom the white population listened, and they received the ordinances of Christianity from the same hands. They met at the communion table their masters and their white
512 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
neighbors, and they could not easily raise violent hands against those whom they had joined in such solemn and sacred devotions. The best preachers of the Southern Churches gave themselves to preach- ing to the negroes, and it may be doubted if as pure a gospel was preached to the former slaves for many years after those pastoral relations were sun- dered as that to which they had been accustomed to listen before the war. Perhaps after the lapse of all these years, with all the work of education which has been done, the negroes are not yet so we'll served pastorally as they were when they were members of the same churches as were the white people of the South and were ministered to by the same pastors. Bishop William Capers of the Methodist Episcopal Church South (the father of General Ellison Capers of the Confederate army, who after the war became the Bishop of the diocese of South Carolina in the Protestant Episcopal Church), rendered high serv- ice on behalf of the evangelization of the negroes. He is buried at Columbia, S. C., and on the monu- ment beneath which his dust reposes is an inscrip- tion which enumerates among the labors by which he was distinguished his work on behalf of "missions to the slaves on the plantations of the Southern states." Bishop William Meade of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the diocese of Virginia was equally devoted to the great cause of Christianizing the negroes. These two great men were not excep- tional in their interest in this work. Such zeal was common among all the Southern Churches and preachers.
If the orderliness of the negroes during the war, when so many things tempted them to different be- havior, shows how great a work of christianization had been done among them, the piety of the leaders
THE SOUTHERN PULPIT. 513
of the Southern armies and the great religious move- ments in the camps of the Southern troops equally reveal how the Christian spirit prevailed among all classes of the Southern white people also. Such Christian men as Eobert E. Lee, Thomas J. Jackson, Leonidas Polk, John B. Gordon, Alfred H. Colquitt, and Clement A. Evans led the Confederate forces, and the revivals of religion which prevailed in both the Army of Virginia and the armies of the west were most wonderful works of grace. In that very interesting volume, Christ in the Camp, Rev. J. William Jones, D.D., a chaplain in the Army of Northern Virginia, gives a charming picture of a typical scene in that army. He says: "Let us go some bright Sabbath morning to that cluster of tents in the grove across the Massaponax, not far from Hamilton's Crossing. Seated on the rude logs, or on the ground, may be seen fifteen hundred or two thousand men, with upturned faces, eagerly drinking in the truths of the Gospel. That reverent worshiper who kneels in the dust during prayer, or listens with sharpened attention and moist eyes as the preacher delivers his message, is our beloved commander-in- chief , General Eobert E. Lee ; that devout worshiper who sits at his side, gives personal attention to the seating of the multitude, looks so supremely happy as he sees the soldiers thronging to hear the Gospel, and listens so attentively to the preaching, is 1 Stonewall' Jackson; those 'wreaths and stars' which cluster around are worn by some of the most illustrious generals of that army; and all through the congregation the 'stars and bars' mingle with the rough garb of the unknown heroes of the rank and file who never quail amid the lead and iron hail of battle, but who are not ashamed to tremble under the power of God's truth. I need not say that this
Vol. 10 — 33
514 KELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
is Jackson's headquarters and the scene I have pic- tured one of frequent occurrence ' :
The late Bishop John C. Keener of the Methodist Episcopal Church South testified a short time before his death to similar conditions among the Confeder- ate forces of the West. He wrote: "Having been appointed superintendent of chaplains on the west- ern side of the Mississippi I know whereof I speak. Before and after an engagement our camp-fires were the places of song and thanksgiving, and many were converted who still attest that God was with us."
Such officers, such armies, such scenes could not have been possible if the life of the South had not been deeply permeated by the most earnest and vigorous piety. And the spiritual forces which pre- vailed then still persist among the Southern people.
Within recent years the progress of the temper- ance movement in the Southern states has attracted the attention of the nation. That movement is a re- ligious movement at bottom. From its beginning it has been sustained by the moral convictions of the people. As it has advanced economic considerations have been brought to bear for its acceleration; but it would have been arrested long ago if it had not been supported by the conscientious convictions of the devout people who belong to the Southern Churches and direct the public opinion of their sec- tion. The Churches give it almost unanimous sup- port, and as church membership increases the chances of life for the legalized liquor traffic dimin- ish. The Southern pulpit has not treated the evil of intemperance with a superficial or cutaneous treatment, but by constitutional methods designed to eradicate it from the social system. The Gospel has been relied upon as the power of God unto sal-
THE SOUTHERN PULPIT. 515
vation from intemperance and every other moral disorder.
Some Distinguished Names of the Southern Pulpit.
All these and other great moral results of like character have been brought to pass through the fidelity and power of the Southern pulpit. Such achievements bespeak the strength of the men who have accomplished them. Who are some of those men I Have they done anything in the world of let- ters or in any other sphere which entitles them to recognition ? Or, have they been given wholly to the work of religious evangelism and moral reform?
It is but reasonable to suppose that men busy with the labors of the pulpit and the cares of the pastoral office would be less productive of literature than they might be if they were not so engrossed. But the Southern pulpit has been distinguished by mighty men, who have made contributions to the thought of the times equal to the best produced in America.
Among the Baptists may be mentioned John Lead- ley Dagg, John Albert Broadus, Jabez Lamar Mon- roe Curry, James Petigru Boyce, and Richard Ful- ler.
Dr. Dagg was the third president of Mercer Uni- versity, and wrote A Manual of Theology, Elements of Moral Science, and Evidences of Christianity. He was a man of great gentleness of spirit, varied learning, and persuasive eloquence.
Dr. Broadus, after taking his degree at the Uni- versity of Virginia, began his public career as the assistant professor of Ancient Languages in that institution, continuing in that work from 1851 to 1853. In 1859 he accepted the chair of New Testa- ment Interpretation and Homiletics in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and in connection
516 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
with that seminary spent most of his unusually use- ful life. He is best known to the theological world by his several works, The Preparation and Delivery of Sermons, Lectures on the History of Preaching, Sermons and Addresses and his very able Commen- tary on the Gosepl According to Matthew.
Dr. Curry was never a pastor, but he rendered high service in the field of education and in political office, as well as in the pulpit. He was a member of the Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Congresses of the United States and of the Confederate Congress from the state of Alabama. He was president of Howard College, Alabama, 1866-1868; professor of Mental Philosophy in Eichmond College, Va., 1868-1881; general agent of the Peabody Educational Fund, and also of the John F. Slater Educational Fund for a time. In 1885 he was appointed by President Cleveland envoy-extraordinary and minister-pleni- potentiary to the Court of Madrid, where he repre- sented his country in the most acceptable manner. He wrote with great vigor and clearness, adorning and illuminating every subject he treated.
Dr. Boyce, after four years in the pastorate of the Baptist Church in Columbia, S. C., entered the edu- cational work of his Church, first as professor of Theology in Furman University and subsequently as chairman of the faculty and professor of System- atic Theology in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He was a chaplain in the Confederate army 1861-1862; a member of the South Carolina legislature from 1862 to 1865, and of the state convention for reconstruction in 1865. From 1872 to 1879 he was annually elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention. He was a trustee of the John F. Slater Educational Fund from its incor- poration until the day of his death. His principal
THE SOUTHEPiX PULPIT. 517
works are A Brief Catechism of Bible Doctrine and Abstract of Theology — treatises growing out of his work in the seminary. He was a man of great execu- tive ability, and he has left a deep impress upon his own denomination and upon the general public in the South.
Dr. Fuller was a native of South Carolina, and at twenty years of age chose the law as his profession ; but afterwards he united with the Protestant Epis- copal Church, and later still entered the Baptist ministry. In 1847 he became pastor of the Seventh Baptist Church in Baltimore, where he remained until his death. He published Letters on the Roman Chancery, Baptism and Communion, and Corre- spondence on Domestic Slavery, the last named work growing out of a controversy with the cele- brated Dr. Francis Wayland, of Brown University. His eloquence and spiritual power gave him high rank in the American pulpit, and commended him to the esteem of those even who differed with him most sharply in opinion.
Foremost among the Methodists was Bishop Will- iam McKendree, a native of Virginia, who with James McGready, William McGee, John McGee, and Barton Warren Stone, did much in connection with the "Revival of 1800" in the Cumberland and Ohio valleys, by which revival that vast and rich territory was rescued from irreligion and out of which emerged "the Cumberland Presbyterian Church." In that great work of grace ' ' camp meetings ' ' orig- inated, and William McKendree as the master spirit of the movement turned them to the greatest pos- sible account. To evangelistic gifts of a high order he added marked ability as a leader of men and an administrator of church government, which led to his election as a bishop of his church in May, 1808.
518 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
No man, unless it may be the bachelor Bishop Fran- cis Asbury, more influentially affected the organiza- tion and early growth of American Methodism than this brilliant son of Virginia.
To a later period belongs the marvelously elo- quent Bishop Henry Bidleman Bascom, who began preaching before he was eighteen years of age, and who at the age of thirty-three was elected chaplain to Congress at the earnest solicitation of Henry Clay. He wrote the protest of the Southern dele- gates to the General Conference of 1844 against the action of the body in the case of Bishop James Os- good Andrew, and afterwards was a prominent leader in the organization of the Methodist Episco- pal Church South under the "Plan of Separation." His volume of sermons is a book of wonderfully beautiful discourses, and his lectures on philosophy are still more excellent, being characterized by greater care in construction and more self-restraint in diction.
Perhaps the greatest preacher which Southern Methodism has produced was Bishop George Foster Pierce. In every respect — physically, mentally, and morally — he was well-nigh a perfect man. He was a native Georgian, the son of the celebrated Dr. Lovick Pierce, who was himself scarcely inferior as a preacher to his more famous son. After his elec- tion to the episcopacy in 1854 he removed to his country place, called "Sunshine," in Hancock county, Georgia, and near him lived Eichard Mal- colm Johnston. After the death of Bishop Pierce, Colonel Johnston wrote of him, "He was the most beautiful of mankind without, and men of all parties believed that his external beauty was the best ex- pression that physical form and features could give of the more rxouisite beauty within." His college
THE SOUTHERN PULPIT. 519
classmate and life-time friend, Gen. Robert Toombs, declared, ' ' He was the most symmetrical man I have ever known — the handsomest in person, the most gifted in intellect and the purest in life," and the late Justice L. Q. C. Lamar, who knew him well, said of him, "Of all the great Georgians I consider him the first."
Bishop Pierce was a member of the famous Gen- eral Conference which met in New York in 1844, and by which Episcopal Methodism in the United States was divided into two great bodies. He bore a con- spicuous part in the debates of the Conference, and during its session he was invited, together with the Hon. Theodore Frelinghuysen and Lord Ketchum, to speak on the occasion of the anniversary of the American Bible Society. One who was present af- firmed that he excelled all who spoke on that occa- sion. His address falling under the eye of Lord Macaulay, that great historian and orator said, "It .is the best specimen of English diction which America has produced." Unfortunately Bishop Pierce wrote but little. His published Sermons and Addresses are masterpieces of pulpit eloquence, and cause the reader to regret that he who spoke so well did not preserve by the pen more of what he said.
A contemporary, friend, and fellow-churchman of Bishop Pierce, was Dr. Augustus B. Longstreet, who preceded Pierce in the presidency of Emory Col- lege, and who wrote the humorous productions en- titled Georgia Scenes and Master William Mitten.
Connected with Southern Methodism in his later years was Dr. Albert Taylor Bledsoe, in some re- spects the ablest reviewer which America has pro- duced. He was graduated from the Military Acad- emy at West Point in 1830, but in a few years there- after took orders in the Protestant Episcopal
520 EELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
Church, and was for a time assistant to Bishop Smith of Kentucky. Some conscientious scruples about matters of faith arising in his mind he aban- doned the ministry, and entered the law, in which profession he engaged in Springfield, 111., where he met in forensic discussion both Lincoln and Douglas. After about ten years at the law he accepted the chair of Mathematics in the University of Missis- sippi, and then later he filled the same chair in the University of Virginia. During the war President Davis appointed him chief of the war bureau and assistant secretary of war. He eventually took or- ders in the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and the Southern Review, which he founded in 1861, was adopted as the theological organ of the Church in 1870. He was the author of A Philosophy of Mathe- matics, An Examination of Jonathan Edwards on the Will, and A Theodicy; or a Vindication of the Divine Glory. He wrote also in defense of his friend Jefferson Davis a treatise entitled, 7s Davis a Traitor? Or was Secession a Constitutional Right Before the war of 1861? In all his writings he showed great logical power, affluent learning, and the most cogent style.
The Presbyterian Church in the South has given to the country some extraordinary preachers, the most conspicuous of whom, perhaps, was Dr. James Henley Thornwell, of South Carolina. He was grad- uated from the South Carolina College at an early age with such distinction that he attracted the atten- tion of John £!. Calhoun, who expressed the opinion that if the young man had chosen a political career he would easily have risen to the highest position in the public service. At the age of twenty-five he was elected to the chair of Philosophy in the South Caro- lina College, and at the age of thirty-nine he sue-
THE SOUTHERN PULPIT. 521
ceeded the Hon. William C. Preston in the presi- dency of the institution. In 1847 he was elected moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly, being the youngest man who had ever been called to that office. In 1861 he was a prominent leader in „ the organization of the Southern General Assembly. He published Discourses on Truth, Rights and Du- ties of Masters, and The State of the Country (1861). His collected works, published in four vol- umes by the Rev. John B. Adger, are a storehouse of literary and theological treasures.
A great admirer and friend of Dr. Thornwell was Dr. Benjamin Morgan Palmer, also a native of South Carolina, but who spent the greater part of his long and useful life as pastor of the leading Presbyterian Church in New Orleans. He published The Life and Letters of Thornwell, The Family in Its Civil and Churchly Aspects, and two volumes of Sermons. His ministry in New Orleans began in 1856 and continued until the day of his death — more than forty years — and when he passed away he was perhaps the best beloved citizen in the city. He was a director of the Columbia Theological Seminary from 1842 to 1856, and of the Southwestern Univer- sity at Clarksville, Tenn., from 1873 until he died. He was also a trustee of Tulane University from its organization in 1882 to the end of his life.
Dr. Moses Drury Hoge was to Richmond, Va., what Dr. Palmer was to New Orleans. He began his ministry as the assistant pastor of the First Presby- terian Church in Richmond in 1843, and continued in that relation until 1845, when he organized the Second Presbyterian Church, of which he remained the pastor during all of his after life. His long ministry of sustained eloquence and unfailing spir- ituality, continued in one Church for more than fifty
522 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
years, is one of the most remarkable in the history of American Christianity, suggesting the illustrious career of purity and power of Chrysostom in An- tioch and Constantinople. During the war he ran the blockade to England to obtain Bibles for the Confederate army, and succeeded in enlisting the efforts of the Earl of Shaftesbury on behalf of the matter, by whose assistance he succeeded in obtain- ing Bibles to the value of $20,000 from the British and Foreign Bible Society.
The Protestant Episcopal Church is numerically much smaller in the South than the Churches whose leaders have been under consideration, but it has not failed to contribute its full share of great preachers to the Southern pulpit and mighty work- ers for the uplifting of Southern life. Among its mightiest men was Bishop William Meade of the diocese of Virginia, who succeeded Bishop Moore in .1842. When he entered the ministry the Episco- pal Church in Virginia was so depressed that it had held no Convention from 1805 to 1811. With all his heart he set about reviving it. He proclaimed a warm and unworldly Gospel, and undertook to in- crease and improve the clergy. It is said that when he approached Chief-Justice John Marshall for a contribution to the fund for the education of the ministry the famous jurist said, ''It was unwise to seek to draw young men into the ministry of a Church that was dead past all possibility of reviv- ing." But the holy man was not to be discouraged, and he lived to see his efforts crowned with success and the misgivings of the chief- justice disappointed. Through his efforts, together with others, the Theo- logical Seminary at Alexandria was established. With reference to the great work of his life the saintly Bishop Elliot of Georgia said, "Raised up
THE SOUTHERN TULPIT. 523
by God to leaven the Church at a moment when the Church was full of coldness and Erastianism, he felt that he must first school himself ere he could per- form the work for which he was anointed. Fear- less by nature, frank by temperament, straightfor- ward because he always aimed at noble ends, com- manding through character, he turned all the quali- ties which would have made him a hero, or a war- rior, into the channels of the Church." One of his most interesting works is his Old Churches, Minis- ters and Families of Virginia, in two volumes. He published also Lectures on the Pastoral Office, and The Bible and the Classics.
One of the most interesting figures in the Protes- tant Episcopal Church in the South was Bishop Leonidas Polk. He was born in Raleigh, N. C., and was educated for the army at the West Point Mili- tary Academy, from which he was graduated in the class of 1827. He resigned the lieutenancy of artil- lery to which he was appointed to enter the min- istry, December, 1827. In 1838 he was elected a missionary bishop, and had under his care the work of the Church in Arkansas, Indian Territory, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. He succeeded most admirably with his extensive and difficult field, and in 1841 was elected Bishop of Louisiana. In 1856 he initiated the movement for the establish- ment of the University of the South at Sewanee, Tenn. When the war broke out he was appointed a major-general, June, 1861, and commanded at the battle of Belmont. He took part in the bloody battle of Shiloh also, and was in command at the battle of Perryville, in Kentucky. He was killed while rec- onnoitering on Pine Mountain, near Marietta, Ga., June 14, 1864. He was a brave, gallant, devoted man, who like Bishop Ellison Capers and Rev. Clem-
524 EELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
ent A. Evans, D.D., filled a general's position in the Confederate army, he rising to the rank of lieuten- ant-general, while Evans was a major-general and Capers a brigadier.
Bishop Richard Hooker Wilmer, of the diocese of Alabama, was another commanding man in the Protestant Episcopal Church. He was born in Alex- andria, Va., in 1816, and consecrated Bishop of Ala- bama in 1864. In 1867 he was honored with the de- gree of LL.D. by the University of Oxford, England, and well deserved the honor thus conferred. At the close of the war he recommended to the clergy of his diocese the omission of the prayer "for the presi- dent and all in civil authority," on the ground that there was in Alabama only military authority. For this act Gen. George H. Thomas assumed to suspend him and his clergy from all their ministerial func- tions, but President Johnson set aside the order. Bishop Wilmer published a charming work entitled, The Recent Past from a Southern Standpoint, or Reminiscences of a Grandfather. He was wise and witty, a preacher of eloquence and an administrator of strength.
One of the most conspicuous of the Roman Catho- lic leaders in America was a Southern man — Arch- bishop Martin John Spalding, who was born in Mar- ion county, Kentucky, May 23, 1810. He founded The Catholic Advocate in Louisville in 1835, and was connected with it until 1858, when he founded The Louisville Guardian. He was coadjutor-bishop of Louisville from 1848 to 1850, bishop from 1850 to 1854, and archbishop of Baltimore from 1864 until his death in 1872. While bishop of Louisville he built a splendid cathedral in that city. He was a copious writer, and among his works may be men- tioned Sketches of the Early Catholic Missions in
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Kentucky, Lectures on the General Evidences of Catholicity and The Life and Times of the Right Reverend B. J. Flaget.
Among Roman Catholic writers of the South may also be mentioned the lamented poet-priest, Abram Joseph Ryan, the author of the Conquered Banner, The Flag of Erin, and Poems, Patriotic, Religious mid Miscellaneous.
No account of the Southern pulpit would be com- plete which omitted to mention Alexander Campbell — one of the most vigorous of men, who, though born in Ireland and educated in Glasgow, Scotland, came in early life to America and subsequently from his home in Bethany, W. Va., leavened much of Ken- tucky, Ohio, Tennessee and neighboring states with his views. Few men have exerted a wider influence. In 1828 he held his great debate with Robert Owen at Cincinnati, on the truth of Christianity. His pow- erful arguments on that occasion made a lasting im- pression on the city and surrounding country. He dearly loved controversy, and frequently engaged in it, one of his most famous encounters being with Archbishop Purcell in Cincinnati, in 1836, on the Roman Catholic Church. He was a man of fine per- sonal appearance, possessed a powerful voice, and a mind of very great strength. At the same time he was a man of the purest character. Few men have impressed more deeply the history of Chris- tianity in America. The Church he founded has spread with great rapidity, and now numbers (1909) 1,285,000, its chief strength being in the Middle West and the Southwest. Among its conspicuous leaders was President James A. Garfield, who was for a time president of the College of his Church at Hiram, Ohio, and who was also a Disciple preacher.
In addition to the men who have made the South-
526 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
ern pulpit great by their ministry exercised in the South have been not a few Southern preachers who have honored their section and served the Church of God well in other parts of the country. Promi- nent among such may be mentioned Eev. Charles Force Deems, who went from the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church South in North Caro- lina to the pastorate of the Church of the Strangers, an independent congregation in New York City, and Bishop Samuel Smith Harris, of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the diocese of Michigan, who was born and educated in Alabama. Dr. Deems edited The Sunday Magazine, published by Frank Leslie from 1876 to 1879, and he founded Christian Thought, the organ of the American Institute of Christian Philosophy. He wrote and published The Triumph of Peace and Other Poems, The Home Al- tar, The Light of the Nations, and other minor works. Bishop Harris, with Rev. Dr. John Fulton, founded The Living Church newspaper in 1878, which he edited for six months. His chief literary production is The Relation of Christianity to Civil Government — the Bohlen Lectures for 1882.
The names mentioned in the foregoing pages are but a tithe of the men who have made the Southern pulpit a power for good to their own section and to the whole country. Many others of equal merit might have been noticed. But these representatives of the leading Churches of the South serve to show in some degree how great and blessed have been the contributions to the building of the Republic made by the Southern pulpit.
WARREN A. CANDKER,
Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.
INFLUENCE OF PEOTESTANTISM. 527
CHAPTER IX.
THE INFLUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM IN THE SOUTH.
:N DEALING with this subject we shall describe, in the first place, the main types of Protestantism which have obtained in the South. In the second place, we shall com- pare its relative prevalence with that of Romanism and Judaism. In the third place, we shall indicate the influence of Protestantism in the South as seen in the home, in the school, in the social ideals, in political life and in a world-wide outlook.
1. The Kinds of Protestantism.
Protestantism in the South has existed in a variety of types from the earliest colonial days. In the col- ony of Virginia the earlier settlers included many of Puritan proclivities. The Virginia colonial gov- ernment speedily became intolerant, indeed, of any save conforming Episcopalians. During the second and third quarters of the Seventeenth century, Quakers and Puritans were driven out of the colony. But after the passage of the English Toleration Act, the Presbyterians, at the close of the Seventeenth century, and more numerously in the second and third quarters of the Eighteenth century, took advan- tage of it. About the middle of the Eighteenth cen- tury they were joined by the Baptists, who multiplied rapidly. In the period of the American Revolution these bodies incited enlightened statesmen, and united with them in the effort, to separate church and state completely and to introduce the fullest re- ligious liberty. In this effort they were supported
528 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
by not a few Episcopalians of liberal mind. Soon after the close of the Revolution, the Methodist societies in the Episcopalian ranks became a dis- tinct ecclesiastical body. German Lutherans and Quakers, in small numbers, had had a place in the country for half a century previously.
Since the Revolution the number of the Protestant sects has increased considerably. The Roman Catho- lics, who prior to the Revolution had been few, living mostly along the shores of the Potomac and suffer- ing many disabilities, and the Jews, now began to come in freely ; and with the general result of broad- ened sympathies in the people at large.
In 1634 the colony of Maryland was founded by a Roman Catholic nobleman, a subject of a Protestant sovereign. The charter of the colony provided for the establishment of the Church of England; but the terms of the charter allowed the proprietary and the colony to tolerate and to give a limited encour- agement to other religions. A majority of the colon- ists throughout the colony's history seem to have been Protestant. Naturally, under such circum- stances, both Roman Catholicism and forms of Prot- estant dissent were tolerated for a time. If laws bearing hard on a particular sect, on the Quakers for example, were sometimes passed, they failed of per- sistent application. Maryland became a sort of asy- lum for Quakers and Puritans till the overthrow of the proprietary government and the legislative estab- lishment of the Church of England, 1692. This free- dom of religion had been due to the peculiar mingling of religious forces which effected and maintained the colony during those early years, and not at all to the bent of either the Papal or the Protestant party taken exclusively. After 1692 the colonists suffered from a long course of Episcopal intolerance,
INFLUENCE OF PEOTESTANTISM. 529
notwithstanding the small number of Episcopalians. This intolerance was much more pronounced in the legislative and practical treatment of Eoman Catho- lics and Quakers, out of fear of Jacobite risings. Protestant Dissenters from the Church of Eng- land were tolerated; and the laws which at first greatly abridged their rights and privileges were relaxed gradually. This course of intolerance re- sulted in a general readiness of the Marylanders, — "half Eoman Catholic, half Puritan," — to further a large religious liberty in the period of the Revo- lution. Thenceforth the sympathies of Protestants have gone on widening.
The " Fundamental Constitutions" of the Caro- linas contained a provision for the establishment of the Church of England and its support by public tax- ation; but guaranteed a limited freedom in religion to all who should not disturb the peace. They took for granted that every one professedly should be of some religion, and provide that "No person above seventeen years of age shall have any benefit or pro- tection of the law, or be capable of any profit or honor who is not a member of some church or pro- fession, having his name recorded in some one and but one religious record, at once. ' ' During the colo- nial era there seem to have been very few Roman Catholics in the Carolinas, but Protestant dissenters were very numerous, constituting a large majority of the population. Episcopalians dominated, par- ticularly in North Carolina, no more by force of character than by numbers. Heterogeneous commu- nities, and long neglected, they enjoyed not only tol- eration but practical religious liberty in many quarters, — where the establishment failed of an organization or a minister. The Presbyterians and the Reformed constituted a considerable element of
Vol. 10—84
530 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
the Carolina colonists from an early date. There was a Baptist Church in South Carolina before the close of the Seventeenth century. A Baptist Church is found in North Carolina as early as 1727 ; and in that colony Baptists increased rapidly after 1754. Quakers were an element amongst the colonists of both the Carolinas from the start. Archdale, one of the proprietors, who became governor in 1695, was a member of the Society. Lutherans were early comers into the Carolinas. Their numbers were much augmented in the course of the Eighteenth cen- tury. The Episcopal clergy in South Carolina were men of learning and character, 1 l elected by their own congregations instead of being appointed to their livings by a patron.'* Accordingly they gave to this Church a warm place in the hearts of South Carolin- ians. Taxation of dissenters for its support was not relished by them, however. In North Carolina simi- lar taxation was most unwillingly borne. In each colony Jews and Roman Catholics had established themselves, though with limited privileges. In the age of the Revolution the people of the Carolinas easily did away with the connection between church and state; and in the constitution of each of these states it was " explicitly provided that no man should be obliged to pay any church rate or attend any relig- ious service save according to his own free and unhampered will."
According to the plan of the colony of Georgia, freedom of religion was to be enjoyed by all but "Papists." The Church of England was privi- leged, in that a general tax might be levied for its support. Little use relatively seems to have been made of this privilege. Shortly after the settlement under Oglethorpe of the original colonists, who were predominantly Episcopal, came German Lutherans
INFLUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 531
from Salzburg, and a company of pious Moravians. About the same time came Scotch, — Highlanders and Lowlanders. Dissenters were so numerous and Episcopalians so few that the establishment was accepted with contempt. After the Revolution the Georgians abolished the connection of church and state and guaranteed similar religious liberty with that secured in the Carolinas.
These states did not go, however, as far as Vir- ginia in giving freedom in religion. They imposed simple religious tests on civil office-holders, while Virginia did away with them ; but liberty was in the air.
With the Louisiana purchase in 1803, a territory was brought into connection with the United States in which the Roman Catholics vastly preponderated. That part of it now covered by the state of Louisiana had been settled near the beginning of the Eight- eenth century. In the colonies founded by Iberville and Bienville there was little tolerance for any non- Roman religion as long as the colonies remained in connection with France; more tolerance when they passed to Spain and when they came back to France. When the country came under the power of the United States, religious inequalities were swept away speedily. It was opened to free Protestant development.
Florida, a Spanish colony from 1565 to 1763, was during that period inhospitable to Protestants. Be- tween 1763 and 1783 it was a British possession, and a sphere in which both Protestant and Catholic were tolerated. Between 1783 and 1819 it was again a colonial possession of Spain, and Protestantism was not favored. In 1819 the territory was ceded to the United States, and came into the peculiar heritage of that people, — religious liberty.
532 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
Protestants of many types and Jews have peopled these two states and the other newer states of the South.
Throughout the South, as throughout the North since 1819, each communion being the equal of every other before the law, the possibility of bitter strife between an oppressed and an oppressing church has been wanting. The spirit of strife has had one less occasion. Protestantism has grown sweeter in tem- per. If the view be confined to the white Protestants, the general type of our Protestantism must be highly commended. If it has become somewhat loose in thought, it has not descended into bald rationalism. If it has tended to traditionalism in parts, it has not fallen into marked Phariseeism. If the view be made to cover the Negro churches, it must be admitted that religion is too largely divorced from morals, and that it has been grossly externalized, in most of the col- ored churches.
Of all the denominations the Baptists and Metho- dists are the most numerous amongst both the white and the black people. Each of these bodies embraces a great number of persons of culture and character, and institutions of power, amongst the white people. The Disciples of Christ have become quite numerous. The Presbyterians and Episcopalians, though much less numerous, deserve special mention because of their commanding influence on the life of the whole people.
2. The Continued Prevalence of Protestantism Compared With That of Catholicism and Judaism.
The states of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia, notwithstanding the existence of the largest religious liberty, have remained preeminently Protestant countries. Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Okla- homa, Tennessee, Texas, and even Florida, have
INFLUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM. 533
become almost, some of them quite, as Protestant. For easily explicable reasons, chiefly because of immigration, the populations of Missouri and Ken- tucky show a large infusion of Roman Catholics. Louisiana and Maryland have the largest popula- tions of Roman Catholics, that Church having had considerable advantage at the start in these terri- tories. In Louisiana about one man in every five or six is an adherent of the Roman Catholic faith. In Maryland about one man in every seven or eight is affiliated with the same communion. The Roman Catholic population of the South is less than one- thirtieth of that of the entire population. The Roman Catholic and Jewish populations combined are less than one-fifteenth of the entire population of the South. The South is thus the Protestant section of our country. It is freely, generally and enthusiastic- ally Protestant. A considerable portion of it (the negroes and ill-taught whites) is so by circumstance rather than by conviction. But a relatively large portion of the South is Protestant by conviction deliberately reached.
3. Some Particular Aspects of Southern Protestantism.
Implications in the preceding paragraphs have already made it clear that the influence of Protest- antism in the South has been controlling. It has been the religion of overshadowing influence, — the religion of the vast majority of the people, and of the vast majority of the leaders and builders of the South.
Protestantism has shaped the institutions of the South. The typical Southern home, outside Louisi- ana and Maryland, in fourteen cases out of fifteen, has been molded by Protestantism. The Cavalier and Puritan homes of Virginia, for example, have enjoyed an immediate access to the Bible, the right
534 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
of free, reverent and responsible interpretation of it, and of free but not licentious thought on all sub- jects. The result has been a development of inde- pendence in the individual character, a want of respect for special priestcraft, a regard for the uni- versal spiritual priesthood of believers, an openness, candor and honesty on the part of the members in dealing with one another, a great respect for the sanctities of home, and a love of home and kindred. The human nature of the Southern people, being like that of men in general, is not universally tractable to the genius of Protestantism ; it is not claimed that all Southern Protestant homes are as the best; it is claimed that Southern Protestantism molds a great deal of beautiful home life.
Protestantism was, on one side, the child of Humanism. It has generally valued learning the truth. Southern Protestantism in ante-bellum days was remarkable for the number of its sons who received a college or university training. The early clergy of various denominations were often found teaching school as well as looking after the spiritual interests of their flocks. As the colonists of the South resided not in towns or villages, but on plan- tations, it was naturally hard to build up academies and schools of most grades, yet some such schools were early established, and limited funds were pro- vided for the free tuition of the poor. About the time of the Eevolution denominations began to build and endow denominational schools and colleges. Between that date and 1861 many denominational colleges came into existence. In Virginia the Pres- byterians founded the institution which has now become Washington and Lee University, and the now venerable Hampden Sidney College. Between 1835 and 1845 the Baptists founded Bichmond Col-
INFLUENCE OF PEOTESTAXTISM. 535
lege. About the same time the Methodists founded Randolph-Macon and Emory and Henry colleges. In North Carolina the Presbyterians founded Davidson, the Methodists Trinity, and the Baptists Wake For- est, etc., etc. After the war, the states being pros- trate, the denominational bodies sprang heroically to the front in educational work. For their efforts the South will ever owe them a vast debt of grati- tude. During the last quarter of a century, the state institutions, themselves the creatures of our Protestant civilization, have been throwing, in virtue of their larger material resources, the denominational schools in the shade, by their better equipment and larger attendance; but in virtue of the greater number of denominational schools and colleges and the closer touch be- tween faculties and students in them, it may be safely inferred that the latter are still doing a scarcely less important work than the state institu- tions of higher learning. Public schools for the chil- dren of the people at large are the offspring of Mar- tin Luther and John Calvin and, with their vast potencies for good and evil, are universal in the South since about 1870. Protestantism is as domi- nant in education as in numbers in the South.
It not only molds so largely the homes and schools of the South, but it has been exerting a growing influ- ence on the social ideals of the people. Thus, not- withstanding the influence in the opposite direction exerted by many Negro Protestants in the South, it is tending more and more to prevent that divorce beween religion and morals so characteristic of the mediaeval churches both Greek and Latin. It is of the genius of Protestant and Reformed religions to magnify the virtues as the fruit of grace, — to appeal to the great doctrines of divine grace as motives to right and noble living. The appeal has not been
536 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
without effect. The high civic ideals which have obtained throughout most of the history of the South, it may be fairly claimed, have been inspired and developed under the fostering hand of Protest- antism. The great statesmen and public characters of the South, and this section has produced her fair proportion of these, the length of her history con- sidered, have for the most part been molded by Prot- estantism. The great men of the period of the Rev- olution, the great men of the middle period of our national history, the great men of the war between the sections, the great men since, like the mass of the people of the South, have been, by a vast majority, Protestant. Many of them apparently have been humble Christians of the evangelical type. No one of them escaped the widely prevailing and powerful influence of Protestantism.
Since colonial days these several bodies of Prot- estants have, with unimportant exceptions, shown themselves to be aggressive propagators of their religions. They have overrun the country, certain poorer and more inaccessible parts excepted ; and of late years have given themselves with rising South- ern warmth, to world-wide evangelization. Consid- ering the poverty into which their section was plunged by the devastation of war and destructive- ness of the "reconstruction," they have responded to their sense of duty to give the world the gospel of their several types with great zeal, and now promise to be a powerful force in the world's evangelization.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Carroll, H. K. : The Religious Forces of the United States; Fisher, George Park: The Colonial Era; Fiske, John: The Critical Period of American History; McCrady's Volumes on South Carolina; 0 'Gorman, Thomas: Roman Catholics (Vol. IX.); The American Church History Series (especially Vol. I.) ; etc.
THOMAS GARY JOHNSON,
Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Polity, Union Theological Seminary.
INFLUENCE OF CATHOLICISM. 53?
CHAPTER X.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH UPON SOUTHERN LIFE.
[OUGH American Catholicity was first planted in a Southern colony (Mary- land), the first Episcopal See, the mother diocese, was established in a Southern city (Baltimore), where also were held the first Provincial and all subsequent Plenary Councils of the Church, nevertheless the Catholic Church has not advanced in the South by any means as rapidly as in the other sections of the United States.
The causes for this curious fact are obvious ; they can all be summed up in — absence of Catholic immi- gration. It should be remembered that during the colonial period there were comparatively only a handful of Catholics, settled almost exclusively in Maryland and the regions around the Gulf of Mex- ico which had been under French and Spanish con- trol. In the Northern states this paucity of num- bers has been vastly increased by immigration from the various Catholic countries of Europe. But in the South this has been largely hindered by the presence of the negro, who is not Catholic to any large extent.
Nevertheless, in spite of this comparatively slow growth, Southern Catholics can view with just pride various facts in the past history of their religion. It is noteworthy that Southerners were the earliest organizers of the Catholic Church in America, from the illustrious Archbishop Carroll down to the ener- getic Bishop England of Charleston, S. C. Southern
538 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
men have been its foremost thinkers and leaders in the hierarchy — such as Kenrick, the two Spaldings, Baily, Moore, etc., whilst to-day its policy is yet very largely guided by such Southerners as Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop Keane and Bishop Denis O'Connell. The Catholic University, the highest expression of Catholic culture in the United States, is the work of Southern men and is located in a Southern diocese. Lastly, it is in no spirit of boast- ing, but of commendable satisfaction, that a South- ern Catholic proudly points to a brilliant, even if small, list of eminent Southerners who professed Catholicity — such as John B. Tabb, perhaps the most delicate of all American poets ; the gentle Joel Chandler Harris ("Uncle Eemus") ; James R. Ran- dall, the author of the great battle-hymn, "Mary- land, My Maryland"; Father Ryan, another poet of the "Lost Cause"; Richard Malcolm Johnston; and, lest we forget, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Mary- land's signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Such considerations render the past history of the Catholic Church in the South worthy of some seri- ous attention, and justify its adherents in believing that a Church, which could do as much as it did under such adverse conditions, is destined to do still more in the future and become an element of impor- tance in the prospective building up of the South.
Past History— 1565-1908.
The history of the Catholic Church in the South can be divided fairly well into three distinct periods. First, the colonial or missionary period, during which the Jesuit, Franciscan and Dominican mis- sionaries followed the flags of the various European countries then contending for the possession of America — whether with De Soto and Coronado ex-
INFLUENCE OF CATHOLICISM. 539
ploring the swamps of Florida or the dry plains of Texas and Colorado, or with Lord Baltimore sailing peacefully up the waters of the Chesapeake, or with those intrepid Frenchmen whose canoes wound their way from the Great Lakes to the mouth of the Mis- sissippi. This extends from 1565 to about 1789. The second is a period of organization, extending roughly from 1789 to about 1829, during which these scattered outposts or colonies are gradually welded into a compact national Church. The third, from 1829 to our own day, a period of further develop- ment, is keeping pace with the equally great progress of the nation at large.
Missionary Period, 1565-1789. — American Catho- licity in general up to 1789 was destitute of any fixed organization. During this inchoate period its life was nourished from three centres differing in character and efficiency according to the rise and fall of the three great world-powers then struggling for the possession of America: Spain, France, England.
(a) Spanish Missions. — Naturally Catholicity sometimes followed, at others marched in the van of Spanish exploration. By a curious coincidence the first permanent Spanish settlement, both civil and religious, on American soil (i. e., United States), was effected by the future commander of the famous Armada, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, who on Sept. 8, 1565, founded the town of St. Augustine in Florida. This was the earliest home of American Catholicity. But the latter, like the nation, was not destined to be Spanish or French, but English. And so during the two centuries of Spanish influence the infant Church led a rather checkered existence and finally dwindled with the passing of Spanish power, though at first it exhibited signs of future pros-
540 EELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
perity greater than any other settlement. Of course, though small in numbers, it enjoyed all the benefits of Spanish culture. Hence, Florida can boast of having possessed the earliest Sunday-schools, clas- sical schools, hospitals, etc. Another Southern state, Texas, was at first a Spanish settlement, and its history subsequently presents the same features on a minor scale.
(b) French Missions. — French influence, both civil and religious, was then, as now, confined to the states near the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence, with the one exception of Louisiana along the mouth of the Mississippi. There Catholicity appeared first about the close of the Seventeenth or beginning of the Eighteenth century. Though hampered con- siderably by the political wars of the time and other internal causes, nevertheless, unlike the Church in Florida, it survived at least in its own immediate locality and to-day preserves some of its French character despite its American organiza- tion.
(c) English Mission. — But it is to the little band of Maryland Pilgrims in 1634 that American Catho- licity owes its true beginnings. The town of St. Mary's was its cradle, to-day Baltimore is its pri- matial See. England had won the day in politics, it also won the day so far as the Catholic Church was concerned. Hereafter Spain and France do not count as factors in her development.
Now, a few statistics as to this missionary period. Naturally we have none complete, but still enough to show how insignificant was the infant Church. Florida. — Its palmy period was from 1625 to 1700. In 1634 there were thirty-five Franciscan mission- aries maintaining forty-four missions, attending to about 30,000 Christian Indians and 300 Europeans
1. Home of the First Catholic Seminary in the United States — the "One-Mile
Tavern" — the site of Saint Mary's Seminary, Baltimore.
2. Interior of the Catholic Cathedral, Baltimore.
INFLUENCE OF CATHOLICISM. 541
in St. Augustine. In 1727 there were only 1,000 Christian Indians; in 1751 there were only four Indian missions near St. Augustine, numbering 136 souls ; practically no Catholicity outside of the Span- ish and negro population in the city. Texas. — In 1759 the Spanish population numbered about 3,000 souls all told; at no time do the baptized Indians seem to have exceeded 2,000. Nowhere in Spanish America had missionary work been such a complete failure. Louisiana. — About 1787 the Church in Louisiana, which extended as far as St. Louis, contained but seventeen parishes and twenty-one priests. This included in a general way Alabama, Mississippi and the region around. Maryland in 1669 had about 2,000 Catholics and two priests; in 1696 about half a dozen priests with about nine chapels. In 1755 the Catholic population of Maryland and Pennsyl- vania was estimated by some at 10,000 attended by fourteen priests — by others at only 4,000. As to the rest of the country in the same year (1755), there were a few stragglers in Virginia ; in Georgia and the Carolinas there were none at all ; the same for the more northern states of New York, New England, etc. In Kentucky from 1774-1790 a few families are reported, chiefly Catholic emigrants from Maryland. In South Carolina, about 1786, were 200 souls who up to that time had their re- ligion concealed ; in North Carolina a mere handful. Georgia was completely closed by penal legislation —we hear only of one priest who labored there about 1796.
One would not reasonably expect a large increase at that period, still it is interesting to note some of the general causes hampering growth. They were, first of all, political. Catholicity in Florida went down completely with the fall of Spanish influ-
542 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
ence; that in Louisiana barely escaped a similar fatality. Unconsciously the Thirty Years ' War and the Hundred Years' War were being fought over again simultaneously by the banks of the St. Johns and the Mississippi. In Europe it was a draw. In America Catholicity lost the first battle. As a result the struggle for America between Spain, France and England became largely a religious one so far, at least, as to render the political victory of any of them disastrous to the ecclesiastical organiza- tion of the others. Even in Maryland, an English colony, growth was hampered by the same penal laws as those in force in other Southern states, for in that age Koger Williams and Lord Baltimore were rare exceptions to the prevailing intolerant sentiment. Internal causes of disease were also at work. There was no fixed, well-working organized hierarchy. The work was almost entirely in the hands of missionaries, only too often incapable and at odds with one another or with the secular and native clergy. Eliminating these causes the Church should have grown more than it did.
(2) Period of Organization, 1789-1829. — One of the causes retarding growth was removed in 1789 by the erection of Baltimore to the rank of an Episcopal See, with John Carroll as its incumbent. From this original See all the other dioceses of the United States have descended. Its erection marked out a new era of progress for the Church at large in both South and North, But with the elimination of the evils springing from want of organization, others sprang up as the result of a want of sys- tematic legislation regarding the holding of church property. They are known as "Trusteeism" —a by-word among Catholics and one of the greatest, if not the greatest hindrance to the nascent Church
INFLUENCE OF CATHOLICISM. 543
during the earlier part of the Nineteenth century. The custom in that day was to vest all property in the control of a board of lay trustees. This was soon found to be incompatible with a Catholic view of the relations between bishop or pastor and people. The latter frequently denied the bishop the power to appoint pastors unwelcome to them and frequently went so far as to retain as pastors cler- gymen unfit for the office. In some localities, like New Orleans and Charleston, this disagreement even went to the limits of open schism with deplor- able results. Trusteeism died eventually, but only after having done incalculable injury to the Church wherever it existed.
Another highly irritating and frequent check to progress was the attempt of foreigners (Irish and French particularly) to regulate American affairs in the appointment of bishops. This involved de- lays, misunderstandings, hard feelings, etc. An instance of the evil effects of such meddling was the establishment of the See of Richmond in 1821 con- trary to the wishes of the Archbishop of Baltimore. The foreign element on the other side were so ig- norant of American geography as actually to believe Richmond further away from Baltimore than Ala- bama or Mississippi, which states therefore still remained attached to the Baltimore diocese. This evil was more short lived than Trusteeism, and soon met an inglorious defeat. About the only good it did was to bring over from Ireland the great Bishop England of Charleston, S. C., one of the most re- markable and able men both in or out of the Cath- olic Church in America.
Still, despite these drawbacks, the organized Church made comparatively steady progress every- where, as the following statistics will show.
544 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
In 1790 Carroll estimated the Catholic population of his diocese, which included all the existing United States, exclusive of Louisiana then independent, at 30,000. About 1810 we find the total Catholic popu- lation in the United States estimated at 70,000, again exclusive of New Orleans ; in 1820 Archbishop Marechal estimated it at 169,500, exclusive of Louisi- ana and also Cincinnati, which would have brought the figures up to 244,500. As to the South in par- ticular, growth was not even then so rapid as in the North, to which the first waves of immigration were reaching. Louisiana, which came under Carroll's jurisdiction in 1805, had at this date about twenty- one parishes with twenty-six priests, almost all of whom, however, left with the expiration of Spanish rule. Trusteeism with its attendant evils infected the rest, so that progress was slow for a long period. In fact, as late as 1825 there were just about as many parishes as in 1805. In Georgia and the Caro- Hnas, despite the heroic labors of Bishop England, Catholics still remained a mere handful — in 1825 there being but three churches in South Carolina, three in Georgia, two in North Carolina. Kentucky and Tennessee (diocese of Bardstown) seemed to have prospered better — about 6,000 Catholics in 1808; 10,000 in 1815; Kentucky in 1826, fourteen log churches, ten of brick, two bishops, twenty-two priests; in 1821 there were but sixty Catholics in Nashville and about thirty more in the rest of Ten- nessee. Alabama in 1822 had 10,000 Catholics at- tended by one priest. Mississippi is included in Louisiana. Poor Florida was the worst off, hardly any remnant of the old Church being left to mark the past civilization of the Spaniard.
(3) Period of Immigration and more rapid devel- opment, 1829-1908. — The year 1829 is a turning point in American history generally, particularly in
INFLUENCE OF CATHOLICISM. 545
that of the Catholic Church, because after that date immigration had such a marked effect upon its growth. This immigration in 1845 exceeded 114,000 ; in 1846 it was 154,000; in 1847, 234,968. Of this vast number (chiefly from Ireland) the South re- ceived but few, comparatively speaking, owing, of course, to the existence of negro slavery, which barred out all seeking agricultural employment. But the North was changed by the incomers both racially and religiously. For instance, in one year (1851) the Catholics in the diocese of Hartford increased from 20,000 to 40,000. Still the South was making some progress. Thus Virginia counted 6,000 in 1841 ; the Carolinas, 20,000 in 1864 ; Louisiana be- tween 75,000 and 100,000 in 1844; Alabama and Florida 10,000 in 1850; Texas about 10,000 in 1841; Maryland about 80,814 in 1857 ; all of which figures indicate considerable, even rapid growth, but still far behind that of the Church in the North, where New England was fast becoming New Ireland with a total Catholic population estimated at 3,000,000 in 1860. Far behind as was the South, the War of Secession put it back still further. Southern Catholics fared like all Southerners ; their churches were desolated as well as their homes, not only by the actual horrors of war, but by all the evils following in its train — lack of organization, utter stop to immigration, poverty, etc. The diocese of Baltimore came to a standstill in growth. Others even retroceded. New Orleans in 1866 showed little advance over 1853; same for Mississippi and Ken- tucky. One thing, however, the war did not do. It created no split in the Catholic Church. Its mem- bers fought on both sides, its nuns nursed the wounded of both armies. But here, in passing, it is to be noted that had Catholic immigration flowed
Vol. 10—35
546 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
into the South as it did into the North, the dispro^ portion of forces would not have been so great. Who knows but that had the Catholic Church been as strong in the South as in the North, Lee might not have laid down his arms out of the pure exhaustion of fighting vastly superior forces. Massachusetts out of its large Irish population could send two Catholic regiments to the front; an equally large proportion of Irishmen from Georgia or Texas would have been sent to meet them.
Since the war the Church has been more than making up her losses, though progress is still quite slow in localities like North Carolina. The sub- joined table gives the present Catholic population of the Southern dioceses taken from the Catholic Directory for 1908:
Dioceses. Priests. Population.
New Orleans (Southern Louisiana) 272 480,000
Baltimore (Greater part of Maryland) 484 255,000
Louisville (Western Kentucky) 204 134,613
San Antonio (Southwestern Texas) 79 85,000
Covington (Eastern Kentucky) 77 54,423
Galveston (Southeastern Texas) 77 50,000
Natchitoehes (North Louisiana) 39 31,431
Nashville (Tennessee) 40 18,000
Wilmington (Del., part of Md. and Va.) 42 31,000
Wheeling (West Virginia) 83 47,334
Richmond (Virginia) 55 40,000
Dallas (North Central Texas) 83 60,000
Savannah (Georgia) 59 23,000
Mobile (Alabama) 96 36,252
Natchez (Mississippi) 42 26,190
Charleston (South Carolina) 22 9,650
St. Augustine (Florida) 49 30,000
North Carolina 30 5,104
Brownsville (South Texas) 30 81,917
1,863 1,498,914 The Future.
The future of Southern Catholicity is bound up largely with the future of the South. This sounds like a platitude, but it has a meaning. I mean that its progress will ever be comparatively slow so long
THE CATHEDRAL, BALTIMORE.
INFLUENCE OF CATHOLICISM. 547
as the South maintains its old social and industrial conditions. Under the head of industrial we refer chiefly to the exclusive employment of the negro in agriculture and to the comparative backwardness of the South in manufacturing, both of which causes tend to check white immigration, and thereby a cer- tain amount of Catholic immigration. Progress, therefore, will be slow because the negro does not, as yet, seem very amenable to Catholicity. True, in large Catholic centres like Baltimore, Washington and New Orleans, there are flourishing negro con- gregations, but even in the best of them it is an uphill job to get the men to lead pure lives. Of course there is no trouble to get them into church. They like that. It is a part of Sunday's fun. But beyond that, their Christianity has little effect. With the women it is different. They really do become good Catholics. This circumstance gives a faint hope that some day also the men will come under the sway of the Church. But that is distant. In the meantime, the great mass of negroes are strangers to everything Catholic, though, I must admit in view of some late utterances on the part of their leaders, they are not unfriendly, but rather curious for in- formation and hopeful of assistance from the Cath- olic Church in their upward struggle. That the negro will ever be the farmer of the South will pass with- out question. But if the South goes into manufac- turing, then a strong Catholic immigration will set in. Birmingham is an instance already. One can appreciate this better by reflecting that in past years the closing of a cotton mill in some New England towns has more than once completely wiped out flourishing Catholic parishes, and that the Catholic Irish of New England are in numerous localities being gradually pushed out by the more prolific
548 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
French Canadian immigrants. Now is it unlikely that these Irish American mill-hands will follow their mills to the South? Here in passing it is well to state that the Catholic Church in general has no fixed attitude on the negro question beyond a purpose to effect their conversion, if possible. Ecclesiastics differ the same as laymen, and if an intense North- erner sees fit to express his Northern opinions on this dark subject, his Southern confreres take his words as those of a private individual and retain their own opinions. It is a fact, however, that those Northern priests who come to work in the South become invariably the most intense Southerners. In passing it is worthy of note that the unusually long delay to Archbishop Spalding's entrance into the See of Baltimore has been attributed by more than one serious historian to the bad odor into which he fell at Washington on account of his intense South- ern sympathies.
At present, outside of the archdiocese of Balti- more and New Orleans, the percentage of negro Catholics is very low. Thus in 1906 there were in the Charleston diocese only 1,000 Catholic negroes out of a total of 500,000 ; in Savannah diocese 2,000 out of 850,000; in Galveston diocese 700 out of 200,000.
Under the heading of social conditions I refer equally to two contingencies — the possible extinction of the old Southerner and the possible change in the mental make-up of the Southerner in general.
The first is not by any means in the realms of the impossible. The ever decreasing number of children of the old Puritan stock in New England has thrown that section very largely under the control of the immigrant Germans, Irish and French Canadians (mostly Catholic), who are notoriously prolific. A
INFLUENCE OF CATHOLICISM. 549
French Canadian family, for instance, of fifteen or twenty children is by no means a curiosity ; in fact, these people for that very reason are beginning to supplant the Irish American who, I regret to say, shows signs of imitating the Puritan in proportion as he advances in the social scale. This vice is con- fined to no particular race or country or religion: it seems to be regulated by economic conditions very largely. Whether or not it has invaded the South the present writer has no knowledge. It is to be sincerely hoped that it will not. But if it does then it seems equally sure that the old Southerner is doomed to extinction and his place in politics and society and industry will be filled very largely by that part of our Catholic population which still prac- tices its religion faithfully so far, at least, as to look upon matrimony as a state of life involving certain essential duties no less than certain pleasures. But we do not desire progress at such a cost of life. However, facts will be facts.
The next condition confronting the future of Southern Catholicity consists, as above stated, in the mental attitude of the average Southerner. Is his mind now, will it ever be sympathetic towards Catholicism? At present it is largely hostile, and the reason is that the South has not so far come into close enough contact with Catholicity. The prejudices inherited from the old-world wars of re- ligion are perhaps bitterer here than in other parts of the country, possibly because the South has been too exclusive in its mental habits to acquire that breadth which comes with larger reading. But with the breaking down of this barrier the South will become more tolerant and sympathetic towards all sorts of thinking on such subjects, just as it has lost its exclusiveness in economics. And with this change
550 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
in his mental make-up the Southerner will inevitably look at Catholicism from a higher and broader and, it is to be hoped, a more tolerant point of view. But how far this may result in changing his religious convictions, no one can tell. Christianity everywhere just now seems to be in solution, so much so that it looks rather doubtful if the United States can cor- rectly be termed a Christian country. Whether Catholicism or a more liberal form of Christianity will emerge from this chaos as a saving force re- mains yet to be seen. The South will accept or reject Catholicism according as it will be affected by the ever increasing religious upheaval and unrest, against which its exclusiveness cannot hold out much longer.
Mention might also be made in passing that at present class distinctions are a positive obstacle to the progress of Catholicity in the South. These dis- tinctions operate everywhere more or less, but per- haps particularly in the South, where there are not many Catholics (comparatively) of what is termed "good social standing," outside of old Catholic set- tlements like Louisiana and Maryland and the newer and more wealthy congregations in some of the large cities, where the economic progress has induced many changes in the strata of social life. Such an obstacle, however, is of its nature only temporary. It once existed also in the North, where now it has almost completely passed away.
Such are some of the peculiar conditions affecting the Catholic Church in the South. How soon these conditions will be modified in favor of a change from the old religious convictions, time alone can tell. But it is not too much to say that the future progress of Catholicity should be a matter of profound interest to the South, more so than it is now or has ever been.
CARDINAL JAMES GIBBONS.
INFLUENCE OF CATHOLICISM. 551
The South is passing through a crisis, out of which it will emerge inevitably changed in many ways. It is hardly possible that it will in this process remain unaffected by a Church which has left such a deep and abiding influence upon every civilization which came into contact with it.
Whatever the outcome, every sensible man must earnestly trust that it will be effected without that intolerance which has in the past so often disgraced both Catholics and Protestants, and in this connec- tion let our separated brethren remember this fact, namely, that it was a Catholic who first put into practice that fundamental tenet of Americanism — religious toleration. It was Lord Baltimore who in his Catholic colony of Maryland first proved to the world the feasibility of a government under which every man could practice his religion unmolested by his fellow citizens of different beliefs. The profound influence of his example is, of course, a matter of history; and if there were nothing else than this, this fact alone should remain as an everlasting mon- ument to the glory of the Catholic Church in the South, and as well an enduring claim to the respect, even if not the adherence, of every Southerner for that same faith.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — The handiest manual is A History of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States by Thomas O 'Gorman (Amer- ican Church History Series, New York, 1895). The author supplies an exhaustive bibliography. The fullest historical account is in the works of John Gilmary Shea: Catholic Church in Colonial Days, Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll and History of the Catholic Church (from 1808 to 1866, 3 vols., New York). The most complete and up-to-date narrative of the Catholic settlement of the colony of Maryland is Maryland: the Land of Sanctuary by William T. Russell (Baltimore, 1907). A complete list of biographies, memoirs, maga- zine articles, original manuscripts and other sources of information is given in the above mentioned work of O 'Gorman.
LTJCIAN JOHNSTON,
St. Ann's Chwrch, Baltimore, Md.
552 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER XI.
THE INFLUENCE OF JUDAISM IN THE SOUTH.
UDAISM means a different thing to dif- ferent minds. Broadly speaking, it desig- nates the religion, the spiritual culture, and the ideals of the Jews. Whatever influence, therefore, Judaism has had in the South, it has wielded through the life of its adherents. Being the religion of a minority, its opportunity for the formal control of affairs naturally is limited. Observing, however, the part taken' by its followers in the life of the community, and their contributions to the common weal, we may justly judge of what Judaism has done for the progress of the Southland.
Indirectly, it may be prefaced, Judaism has had a vast influence on American civilization. As the parent of Christianity, it has impressed its mark on the life of the Republic. From the Bible — Israel's masterwork, — the Decalogue, the ethical precepts and social ideals of the Jewish prophets, was quar- ried most of the material for the spiritual and moral structure of America. More directly, however, we must seek the effect of Judaism on the South in the lives of its actual adherents, who by their conduct and endeavors have shown the nature and power of Jewish ideals.
The Southern Jew as a Patriot.
The Jew in the South has been a patriot. Patriotism is an essential doctrine of Judaism. There is an impression in some quarters that the Jews are a people without a country. How unfor- tunate that such a notion should still exist! For
INFLUENCE OF JUDAISM. 553
thousands of years, since the fall of Judaea, the Jews have survived as a religious body. They have given an unequaled example of the conserving power of a mighty spiritual ideal. Politically, however, they have invariably adhered to the country of their birth or adoption. No fault of theirs, that some countries have disowned or outlawed them. Their loyalty, in most instances, has proven quenchless. The Jews driven from Spain in the year 1492 by the fanaticism and cruelty of their Catholic rulers and neighbors, were none the less in all matters but their faith — in language, in culture, in habits, in patriotism — like the other Spaniards. Moreover, from the very beginning of Israel's experience as a dweller of countries other than Palestine, loyalty formed a vital part of his religion. "Seek the peace of the city," was the message of Jeremiah to Israel in Babylon, "and pray unto the Lord for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace."
In the history of Southern patriotism the names of Jewish citizens are inscribed in letters of gold from the very earliest days of the Republic. Benjamin Levy, of Baltimore, was conspicuous enough to be on the committee arranging the celebration in honor of the adoption of the Constitution. During the Rev- olutionary War, the Jews of South Carolina and Georgia were found fighting, like the rest of the population, on both sides. Of course, it is the men who battled for independence whose memories have remained most precious. Foremost among the latter was Francis Salvador, scion of-an old Jewish family, who held a high place among the revolutionary lead- ers in South Carolina. He was a member of the first and second provincial congresses (1775-1776), attain- ing eminence in debate as well as on committees of first importance. With Colonel Pinckney, for exam- ple, he formed a special committee to verify the
554 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
engrossed copy of the new constitution laid before the Congress, March 26, 1776. As the constitution provided that the Provincial Congress was to be the General Assembly of the state until the 21st of October following, Salvador became a member of the first General Assembly of South Carolina. He died August 1st of the same year from wounds received in a battle with Indian allies of the British, while riding with Major Andrew Williamson. ' ' The whole army regretted his loss," writes an old chronicler, "as he was universally loved and esteemed by them." Drayton, in his Memoirs, says: "His fate excited universal regret. His manners were those of a polished gentleman, and as such he was inti- mately known and esteemed by the first Revolu- tionary characters of South Carolina"; while another historian adds: "Mr. Salvador's name appears in every history of South Carolina."
In subsequent wars, also, the Jews of the South did not fail to give splendid examples of patriotism both in the field and at home. This was particularly the case during the War of Secession. Careful and conscientious study leads Dr. Elzas, in his History of the Jeivs of South Carolina, to remark as follows : 4 * The story of the Jews of South Carolina in the War between the States is a most glorious chapter in the annals of Jewish patriotism. To say that practically every man was at the post of duty is but to express the literal truth. Young boys and old men left their homes to do duty in the field, and many were the families whose every male member went to the war. ' '
Of course, the most valuable accession to the Confederate cause from among the Jews was Judah P. Benjamin. One need not pause here to dwell on his life and his marvelous career as lawyer, orator, statesman. After having represented Louisiana in the United States Senate, Benjamin, during the war,
INFLUENCE OF JUDAISM. 555
was successively attorney-general, secretary of war, and secretary of state, and, above all, the most inti- mate friend and most influential adviser of Jefferson Davis. Mrs. Mary Boykin Chesnut, in her Diary from Dixie, under date of Jan. 18, 1864, thus alludes to the attention Benjamin commanded in the high- est social circles of Richmond: ''Everything Mr. Benjamin said we listened to, bore in mind, and gave heed to it diligently. He is a Delphic oracle, of the innermost shrine, and is supposed to enjoy the honor of Mr. Davis 's unreserved confidence." On his shoulders rested the burden of the South 's diplomacy. Not for naught was he styled "the brains of the Confederacy." "He had not led his section into the war," says his latest biographer, Mr. Pierce Butler, "but during the fatal years of that war no one man had a greater share in directing the destinies of the South, save the President alone."
The Jews and Religious Liberty.
In the promotion of religious liberty the Jews of the South have taken a prominent part. They helped bring about that total separation of church and state which is one of the most glorious achievements of our democracy. Maryland was led to adopt the principle of universal religious liberty by the activity of Jewish citizens. Even after the constitu- tion of 1776 had established the religious rights of all, public office in that state could be held only by such as subscribed to the Christian religion. From 1797 on, Jewish citizens made a strong fight, lasting for a generation, for the removal of that provision. In 1825 an Act of Assembly was finally passed abol- ishing it, and the two Jews most active in the strug- gle were, the year following, elected members of the city council of Baltimore. Since then the Jews of Maryland have rendered noteworthy service in
556 P.ELIGIOTJS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
divers political capacities. But nothing can surpass in merit their brave and tireless fight for complete religious liberty in the state.
There is little room for doubt that the Jewish element made itself felt similarly in the struggle which resulted in the passage of the Act for Eeli- gious Freedom in Virginia. We know what pride Jefferson took in this Act, prepared by him seven years before its adoption; what a source of true pride it is to every Virginian. The Act establishing religious freedom was not passed, however, without a sharp contest. Another measure, which would have curtailed the rights of every non-Christian citizen, first had to be defeated. It was proposed to have a universal tax ' ' for the support of teachers of the Gospel." Introduced in 1784, this measure gained considerable popularity, and would have passed but for the strong opposition organized and led by Madison. Assiduous labor and eloquent appeal on the part of the latter stopped the enact- ment of a law which would have compelled every Jew and other non-Christian to contribute to the support of other people's churches, would have restricted the freedom of opinion and conscience, and deflowered Virginia of the chief beauty of Amer- ican civilization.
Eecent studies lead to the conclusion that the influence of the Jewish population of Vir- ginia with Madison and his fellow-workers was responsible to some extent for the vigor with which the obnoxious measure was fought. The Jews were a concrete example of the injustice it would entail. "The leaders of the Virginia movement," says an historian, "had been brought repeatedly into per- sonal contact with zealous and self-sacrificing Jewish co-workers in the struggle for American independ- ence. They knew and appreciated them and their
INFLUENCE OF JUDAISM. 557
efforts." Haym Salomon, for example, to quote from the manuscript of Jared Sparks, "extended during the Revolutionary struggle to the immortal delegation from Virginia, namely, Arthur Lee, Theo- dore Bland, Joseph Jones, John F. Mercer, and Eden Kandolph, liberal supplies of timely and pecu- niary aid, and we find it declared by one of the most accomplished, most learned and patriotic members of the succeeding sessions of the Kevolutionary legislature, James Madison, that when the pecuniary resources of the members of Congress, both public and private, were cut off, recourse was had to Mr. Salomon for means to answer their current expenses, and he was always found extending his friendly hand." Madison, likewise, was personally the recip- ient of frequent kindnesses from Salomon, which must have disposed him toward friendship for the Jews. Besides, there is evidence that Virginia at the time contained a considerable Jewish element, who no doubt exerted their influence against the Assess- ment Act and in favor of the Act for Keligious Freedom.
An interesting sidelight on the position of the Jews in Virginia is thrown by an old document, unfortunately undated, containing. an address by the Jews of Richmond to the Common Council of that city. * * Among the Jewish inhabitants of Virginia, ' ' the address recites in part, "are more men of ster- ling worth than among the same amount of persons elsewhere, and [they] have left their example as merchants and citizens to be safely followed by others. In times, too, when the country was in danger from invasion by a foreign foe, the Israelites of Richmond snatched up arms at the first alarm, and at the memorable attack on the frigate Ches- apeake thex were found foremost amidst those who
558 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
hastened forward to be ready at the call of their country. ' '
The Jews in Southern Industrial Development.
What the Jews of the South have done for its commercial and industrial development cannot be related here in full. One need but look around to see the multitude of monuments. It is one aspect of the influence of Judaism — which accentuates indus- try, work, the improvement of the opportunities of this world as an essential of religion. A word should be said, however, about the pioneer work of Jews along industrial lines. Among the earliest creators of important branches of manufacture and commerce in various Southern states we find Jewish names. Abraham de Lyon, for instance, who had been a vineyardist in Portugal, in the year 1737 introduced the culture of grapes in Georgia. Indeed, a goodly number of Jewish passengers had been brought to Georgia as early as 1733, aboard the second vessel that reached the colony from England. These early settlers devoted themselves to -the cultivation and manufacture of silk and to the pursuit of agricul- ture, as well as to different classes of trade. In 1751 the trustees of the colony sent over Joseph Otto- lenghi to supervise the extensive silk industry. He became prominent in the political life of the colony and was elected to the Assembly in 1761 and in successive years, thus being one of the first Jews in America to act as a representative of the people.
Among the fathers of industry in South Carolina we find Moses Lindo, who arrived from London in 1756. Engaging in the manufacture and exportation of indigo, he succeeded, at an outlay of much money and effort, in making it one of the chief industries of the colony. His interest extended to scientific experiments in cognate fields, particularly with
INFLUENCE OF JUDAISM. 559
drugs and dyes, and he offered prizes for useful dis- coveries. So valuable did his services prove that on application of the leading men of the province he was appointed surveyor and inspector-general of indigo, an office which he held from 1762 to the time of his death in 1774, and through which he gave great impetus to the expansion of the industry.
Several years later, in 1785, Abraham Mordecai migrates from Pennsylvania to Montgomery county, Ala. He establishes trading-posts and deals exten- sively with the Indians, "exchanging his goods for pinkroot, hickory-nut oil, and peltries of all kinds." In October, 1802, with the aid of two other Jews, Lyons and Barnett, who came from Georgia, bring- ing "their tools, gin-saws, and other material on pack-horses," he erects the first cotton-gin in the state. Similarly, we encounter Jewish names in other migrations of this age. Among those who, in 1774, come to Kentucky with Richard Henderson to buy the Green Eiver country from the Cherokee Indians, there is Nathaniel Hart. Among the large patents for land in Western Kentucky, granted about 1784, is one to Isaiah Marks for 20,000 acres. It is almost certain that both Hart and Marks, if they were Jews, as their names would suggest, owing to isolation and marriage out of their faith, drifted away from Judaism. This, however, was quite common throughout the South, particularly in places remote from the more important Jewish centers, and it would take years of study, and many volumes, and much more candor on the subject than is displayed at present, to give a full account of the many South- ern families whose ancestors, two or three genera- tions ago, were Jews.
Jewish names are intimately interwoven with the history of Texas. Jacob de Cordova and Henry Castro were both conspicuous among its pioneers,
560 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
and the name of the latter is perpetuated in Castro- ville and Castro county, in northwestern Texas.
The Jew in the Liberal Professions, the Arts and Sciences.
In the liberal professions the Jew has always been eminent. His emphasis on education is well- known. Both religion and history have developed in him a passion for culture. In the Southland, also, Jews have ranked high in the various professions. They have attained distinction as teachers, preach- ers, writers, physicians, lawyers. At Charleston, for example, we find Isaac Harby, who is not only active in the important Jewish congregation of his city, but also, from the year 1809 on, conducts an acad- emy, and stands out as an essayist, critic, publicist, playing quite a part in the political discussions of his time, and as author of several popular dramas. His townsman, Jacob N. Cardozo (1786-1873), also, is active as a writer, particularly on political and commercial themes, in Charleston and other South- ern cities. One of the earliest schools in Alabama was conducted by a Jewish educator, a Mr. Judah.
In medicine, the names of two Jewish pioneers might be especially mentioned: Dr. Jacob Lum- brozo, of Maryland, and Dr. Nunez, of Georgia. Dr. Lumbrozo, aside from his profession, owned a plantation, engaged in trade with the Indians, as well as with London merchants. Tried for blasphemy in 1658, two years after his arrival, he was committed to prison, but released by the general amnesty granted in honor of Richard Cromwell's accession. Save for his personal influence, he could hardly have managed to dwell in the colony, which in matters of religion was intolerant. His co-religionist, Dr. Nunez, like- wise, gained popularity in Savannah, Ga., because of his medical knowledge and wealth. An efficient and
INFLUENCE OF JUDAISM. 561
honest physician in those days was a boon. "The doctors." says Professor Albert Bushnell Hart in his work on National Ideals, speaking of the pro- fessional men of the Eighteenth century, "to judge by the account of one of them, were a rude and untutored set, much given to uproarious quarrels over the merits of schools of medicine of which they understood little. ' ' No wonder Mr. Oglethorpe took occasion to point out to the trustees the debt of the colony to the medical services of Dr. Nunez, which the trustees bade him acknowledge as liberally as their general prejudice against Jews would allow.
To the law, also, the Jews of the South have given some men of first rank. Judah P. Benjamin, one of the most gifted lawyers of his time, admired on both sides of the Atlantic, has been referred to. Philip Phillips was another Jewish Southerner high in the profession of law. A native of Charleston, South Carolina, he was a member of the Nullification Convention of 1832 and elected to the state legisla- ture two years later. Resigning in 1835, he moved to Mobile, Ala., where he gained renown rapidly. In 1837 he is president of the Alabama State Conven- tion, in 1844 and again in 1852 a member of the state legislature, and from 1853 to 1855 he repre- sents Alabama in Congress. Finally, he practices his profession in Washington. Besides, he is author of the Digest of the Supreme Court of Alabama and of Practice of the Supreme Court of the United States. It is said that the tribute paid him by the bar of the Supreme Court at a memorial meeting held Feb. 16, 1884, was remarkable. His career was referred to "as a model for citizens, for statesmen, for lawyers, and for judges." Another son of Charleston — that mother of so many noteworthy Jews of the South — was Raphael J. Moses, who rose high as lawyer and statesman in Georgia, and was
Vol. 10—36
562 EELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
renowned both as orator and patriot. He and his three sons served in the army and the navy of the Confederacy, he being major on the staff of General Longstreet. They all became noted for bravery. After the war, in 1866, Moses was elected to the legislature of Georgia. He was a loyal Jew, and his open letter to W. 0. Tuggle, who had taunted him during his campaign with being a Jew, has helped to save his name from the wallet of oblivion. Eminent as a lawyer and citizen was Lewis N. Dembitz (1833-1907), of Louisville, Ky. Learning, patriotism, and well-nigh flawless nobility of char- acter made him one of the ornaments of the bar of Kentucky. He was universally beloved and admired. Mr. Dembitz was one of the most versatile men that ever lived in Kentucky, and the influence of his per- sonality extended to most diverse classes of the pop- ulation. With erudition in the law he combined a high degree of rabbinic scholarship. Besides, he was a linguist and mathematician of rare power. Con- servative in religion, he was in demeanor truly pious. As delegate to the National Republican Convention of 1860 he helped nominate Lincoln. Lasting service he rendered to Louisville as assistant city attorney from 1884 to 1888. In this capacity he drafted, in 1888, the first Australian ballot law ever adopted in the United States. He acted as commissioner for Kentucky at the conference for the uniformity of state laws, in 1901. His writings, aside from a mul- titude of magazine articles on a variety of subjects, include such works as Kentucky Jurisprudence, Law Language for Shorthand Writers, Land Titles in the United States, as well as an authoritative book on Jewish Services in Synagogue and Home. Through- out his career Mr. Dembitz took a deep interest in religious, civic, and communal affairs, and in his
INFLUENCE OF JUDAISM. 563
closing years he was one of the leaders in the move- ment for the purification of politics in Kentucky.
As for the Jewish ministry in the South, it has done its share for spiritual advance and the diffusion of high ideals. Some of the most erudite and elo- quent rabbis of America have ministered to Southern congregations. Though space will not permit dis- cussion of their work, severally, it may be said of them as a class that they have done not a little toward the spread of liberal and progressive reli- gious thought. Following the example of the Jewish prophets, they have laid particular stress on the idea of religion as an ethical and social force. Also, they have striven to establish sympathetic understanding and brotherly relationship between Jew and non- Jew. Nowhere are church and synagogue on more cordial terms than throughout the South. Such men as Gustavus Poznanski, of Charleston, James K. Gutheim, of New Orleans, Abraham Harris, of Rich- mond, Adolph Moses, of Louisville, have left an abiding spiritual influence in their several commu- nities, and the effect of their teaching has not been confined to the members of their own faith.
Through the liberal arts, also, the Jew has served the South. Charleston seldom possessed a spirit more sweet and benign than Penina Moise (1797- 1880), the gentle teacher and poet. Her home was a centre of culture and idealism. Twenty-five years of blindness did not affect her buoyancy and intel- lectual enthusiasm. "There died in Charleston in 1880, ' ' wrote a critic, ' ' at the age of eighty-three, a Jewish poetess, whose life most admirably illustrates the literary idea of the old South. This was Penina Moise, who for many years was the literary pivot of Hebrew Charleston and whose influence extended far beyond the circle of her co-religionists. Blind, poor, getting her living in her old age by keeping a school,
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she yet created a literary salon, to which the best minds of Charleston flocked. Her Friday afternoons were a centre of intellectual intercourse. To the romantic imagination of the young girls whom she taught she presented herself as an incarnation of intellectual and social splendor — a queen of literary society." True devotion, as well as melody, per- vades the many sacred poems of Penina Moise. They form one of the treasures of her community.
Among living poets, Kobert Loveman, of Georgia, has won recognition. He is a master of the lyric. Patriotic themes ofttimes inspire his muse. And in the deep notes it is his wont to touch, both joyous and sad, on the mysteries of God, Nature, and Man, do we not hear an echo of the olden chants of the psalmists and prophets of Israel? The mingling of the sense of majesty and awe with the undernote of sadness and faith in the religious lyrics of Loveman cannot but remind one of the Jewish heritage of the poet.
Likewise, religious and patriotic subjects have fre- quently inspired Moses Ezekiel, one of America's most famous sculptors. Born in Richmond, Va., where his father was prominent and active in the Jewish community, Ezekiel was educated at the Vir- ginia Military Institute, interrupting his studies long enough to serve in the Confederate army. Upon graduation, he took up the study of painting. Even- tually, however, he turned to sculpture, in which he has since gained many honors. He has enriched the art with such works as "Virginia Mourning Her Dead" and an heroic bust of Washington. His "Religious Liberty," a group in marble, was placed in 1876, at Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, by the Jewish fraternal order of B'ne B'rith in honor of the centennial celebration. Lexington, Va., has a Jefferson monument by Ezekiel, and another monu-
INFLUENCE OF JUDAISM. 565
ment to the same American hero by the same artist was given by two Jewish citizens to the city of Louisville, Ky.
The Jew in Southern Philanthropy.
This sketch may well close with a word about Jewish philanthropy in the South. Charity is one of the foundation stones of Judaism. ''Charity and the bestowal of kindnesses," says the Talmud, "out- weigh all the other commandments." Throughout the Southland may be found institutions of all sorts created by the benevolence and public spirit of Jewish citizens. Schools, hospitals, orphan homes, agencies for the improvement of the conditions of the poor, abound. Baltimore, Louisville, and Atlanta have federations of Jewish charities of the most advanced type. New Orleans is a veritable beehive of benevolence, and every other Jewish community of the South is generously and earnestly seeking to solve the problem of poverty and suffering among Jews. The Jewish poor are kept from becoming a burden on the rest of the community. The suffering of Jews, of course, is due largely to the migrations caused by persecution in Russia and other countries. Galveston, for example, is a focus of immigration. The Southern Jew, however, has enough loyalty and compassion to share the misery of his oppressed and impoverished brother, and his organized philan- thropies are the expression of this sentiment.
This is not to say, however, that the Jews of the South have no heart for the needs of others. On the contrary, they continually have given examples of most liberal non-sectarian charity. One of the tablets in the Orphan House of Charleston is dedi- cated to the memory of Mordecai Cohen. Indeed, none has ever surpassed in this respect Judah Touro, the unforgettable New Orleans merchant and
566 RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
philanthropist. That he was a true patriot may be judged from the fact that during the defense of New Orleans by Andrew Jackson he entered the ranks as a common soldier and served until he was wounded, as well as from his gift of ten thousand dollars toward the completion of the Bunker Hill monument. Dying in the year 1854, he left his huge fortune to a host of charitable institutions, of all races and creeds, all over the land, including eighty thousand dollars for the founding of the New Orleans alms- house. Nor was his last testament aught but in accord with the benevolent habit of his whole life. No wonder he was the idol of his community as well as an honor to the religion he loved so loyally and devotedly.
Surely, if the measure of a religion lie in the con- tribution of its devotees to the economic, social, and spiritual forces of a country, Judaism need not be ashamed of its influence in the South. It has been a power making for growth, for beauty, for freedom. And now, as Eobert Loveman sings in his Ode to Liberty,
"And now the sun of freedom shines, And every vine of freedom twines, — Holding the Union in a grasp, No earthly power shall unclasp; No North, no South, no East or West, But one Bepublic brave and blest, Whose song and watchword aye shall be, But Liberty, sweet Liberty. ' '
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — The information has been gathered mainly from the publications of the Jewish Historical Society of America and Barnett A. Elzas: The Jews of South Carolina (Philadelphia, 1905) ; also the Jewish Encyclopedia.
H. G. ENELOW,
Babbi Temple Adath Israel, Louisville.
PART V.
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER I.
TEMPERANCE EEFOEM IN THE SOUTH.
>>
)HE remarkable movement which resulted at the opening of the year 1909 in a prac- tically solid Prohibition South, in which less than thirty counties out of 994 coun- ties permit the sale of intoxicants by legal license, is a phenomenon worthy of record in the permanent history of moral and social progress in the country.
The Southern movement has proven of such dis- tinct influence upon similar movements in the whole country as to constitute a significant contribution to the building of the nation.
The significance of the movement in the South is intensified by the fact that the Southern people are generally regarded as the cavaliers of personal liberty, a people socially classed as the exponents of hospitality and ''dram-drinking," and a people politically trained in contention against all forms of sumptuary law.
567
568 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IX THE SOUTH.
Early History of Liquor Traffic in the South.
An intelligent account of temperance reform in the South is impossible without taking into consid- eration the whole movement of temperance reform in the United States. The drinking customs of the English and Scotch colonists who settled in Virginia and Carolina were neither better nor worse than the habits of those who settled New England. They shared in the common practice of that day, which made rum an article of commerce with the Indians and a means of social exhilaration. They were a genuine section of the Teutonic race which from ancient times was an intemperate race. One of the early writers made a record which later history has not disputed. ""Wherever the Teuton is," he says, "there drunkenness prevails." It was one of our Teuton ancestors, by name Gambrinus, who is said to have discovered the art of making beer. That man is the canonized saint of the brewers until now. The Southern colonists, descending from the Teutonic conquerors of Britain as Anglo-Saxons, brought with them the habits which prevailed in England and in Europe at that period. They set about to conquer the aboriginal inhabitants with the musket and the rum bottle. As intercourse increased, taverns were established and these taverns were not only licensed to sell, but were required to keep a stock of liquors on hand. In Virginia and in Mas- sachusetts there were prudent efforts to repress intoxication as early as 1635, but the temper of adventure, the dominant impulse of civilization in the new world, was not favorable to repressive measures. In Virginia, a prohibitive law against the sale of wine and ardent spirits was passed in 1676, but it remained a dead letter. Laws of a similar
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sort were ordained in other colonies during the lat- ter part of the Seventeenth century, but the grow- ing commerce and the increasing communication of trade appear to have set aside all efforts to control the traffic in drink. After 1700 history records more than a hundred years of constantly increasing drunk- enness. Bum was imported from the West Indies; New England learned how to make rum from molas- ses; and without check from religion or other pro- test, the Eighteenth century opened with a culmina- tion of drunkenness so general that an English writer, after visiting America, declared that intem- perance was "the most striking characteristic of the American people." From 1792 to 1810 the num- ber of distilleries in the United States increased from 2,579 to 14,191. In 1792 the consumption of distilled spirits amounted to 11,008,447 gallons; in 1810, to 33,365,559 gallons. During that period the population had not quite doubled. The vice of drunkenness continued to increase from that period to 1825, when the per capita consumption was four and four-sevenths gallons for every person in the country. In this carnival of intoxication the South- ern states were not behind the others, although it may be noted that neither then nor later was the South greatly engaged in the manufacture of intoxicating drinks.
Beginning of the Prohibition Movement.
The temperance reform movements which laid the foundation in the moral life of the South for our present-day prohibition began to spring forward immediately out of the excesses just referred to. The first voice to cry in this wilderness was that of a Presbyterian physician, Dr. Benjamin Bush, of Philadelphia. In 1785 he had published his famous
570 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
pamphlet on The Effects of Ardent Spirits on the Human Mind and Body; in 1811 he renewed his cry by presenting 1,000 copies of this pamphlet to the General Assembly of his church. How dense was the wilderness in which this man cried may be inferred from the fact that in 1813 a resolution to the effect that "no stationed or local preacher shall retail spirituous or malt liquors without for- feiting his ministerial character among us" was introduced into a Methodist Conference and was voted down. But the tide was turning. Societies of temperance reform began to spring up. Method- ist Conferences, Presbyterian Synods and Baptist Associations began to move consistently in alignment against drink and drinking; total abstinence agita- tion became propagandic; and by the beginning of 1833 more than 5,000 societies, with an active mem- bership of 1,250,000 adults had been organized. In 1833 the first general temperance convention was held in Philadelphia. The Southern states were well represented in that convention. It had been the Mississippi Total Abstinence Association that had among the first included cider and grape wine within its ban. In 1836 the second convention met in Saratoga. Maryland, Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia were leaders in this convention.
From 1840 to 1860, with increasing discourage- ment, due to the strain of sectional animosity, the temperance reform movements in the South perse- vered in their educational efforts. The war came, and chaos. The principal society — The Sons of Temperance — was swept out of existence in the South. When the war was over the friends of the cause began to rally. Lee surrendered in April, 1865. Less than seventy miles from Appomattox,
TEMPEEANCE BEFORM. 571
at Petersburg, Va., the soldiers of temperance within three months had begun the organization of a new army, to take the place of those societies which had been swept away by the war. It was called "The Friends of Temperance. " " The Independent Order of Good Templars" also became active in the South- ern states. From this time forward the fight against the saloon has been pressed steadily to slow but constant moral triumph. People who are regarding prohibition as a "wave" — a brief and passing tempest in a tea-pot — are very blind to history.
Some Characteristic Facts of Prohibition.
Prohibition is an evolution — the consummation of patience and perseverance. It is the result of 200 years of hammering. In various methods ani- mated by one spirit, temperance reform has been a progressive process in the South. Without any definite cooperation a score of agencies have been providentially and unconsciously organized in their attack on the liquor traffic.
The very license laws which are now being set aside by prohibition were themselves originally a temperance reform in rudimentary stage.
The increasingly higher tax imposed for liquor licenses was at bottom an anti-saloon sentiment.
The courts so interpreted these laws and estab- lished the legal construction that the liquor traffic had no rights, as other business, outside specified licensed rights, and these could be annulled at any time without recourse.
The moral suasion movements were the founda- tion builders of all the legislative antagonism of license laws, and these in turn paved the way for local prohibition and local prohibition possessed the land and built the solid rock on which state prohibi- tion rests. State prohibition is but a master
572 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
workman building the foundation for national legislation against the liquor traffic.
The local option method has been the mainly suc- cessful strategy of the war against the saloon power. It began in the South twenty-five years ago. By this method the land was steadily possessed. Pro- hibition incorporated itself in community after com- munity, in county after county — till the common social sense covered the state and spoke as the voice of the state. This is the fact explaining what we are now witnessing in the South. At the dawn of 1907 the saloons tolerated in a population of twenty- five million people numbered only half as many as could be found in one single city in the North. More- over, when prohibition gained a foothold in counties, it began at once to conquer the hearts of those who originally opposed it. Minorities were educated and absorbed, and prohibition passed out of the arena of controversy with these majorities of Southern people. In the states which constituted the old Southern Confederacy there was at the dawn of 1907, out of their total of 994 counties, a prepon- derant mass of 825 counties which had adopted the prohibition policy and were in unchallenged pursu- ance of it. This was the situation when what is ignorantly called the "prohibition wave," or the "prohibition experiment," began to attract general attention by its rapidity of consummation. If the state legislators in the South had met in a con- gress to represent their constituencies in a vote on prohibition as a policy, a congress of Senate and House members of the twelve Southern General As- semblies of 1907, the vote would have stood 1,400 to 600 in favor of prohibition. It was this realized status of the public will that has made the prohibition movement so easily resistless. Here were these vast
TEMPERANCE REFORM. 573
majorities; what else could have been natural in a Democracy such as the South is? The immediate advance to state and general prohibition is simply a normal movement to confirm in law what is already confirmed in social purpose. The momentum of the movement which astonishes the newspapers is the energy that accompanies the last blow of a long and patient hammering, the last stroke that sends the confident boat across the line, the last leap in the last lap of the race that wins the goal. The tidal character of the movement, the sense that everything is being borne irresistibly forward, shared by the liquor dealer no less than by the Prohibitionist, the disclosure that for years the liquor traffic has been resting on a surely thinning crust of popular tolera- tion, the calmness of the public mind toward its dismay and confusion at the disclosure, and the sense of finality in what is being done which per- vades the atmosphere, constitute a phenomenon of the prohibition movement explainable only and com- pletely by the fact that it is not a revolution but an evolution with roots deep thrust and a life history behind it and vital progress in it.
Another interesting fact in the present progress of prohibition which differentiates the movement from all former temperance reforms is that in its narrow sense temperance is not its main objective. It is not an effort to make men good by law. Of course it purposes to create conditions which will assist men to be sober who want to be sober, and will make it difficult for men to get drunk who want to get drunk. But a study of the controlling motive of public senti- ment will reveal that its spirit is mainly what may be characterized as enlightened self-interest. The drunkard and the drunkard's interests are not the chief consideration, though these things are not lost
574 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
sight of. It is the drinker as a husband, a father, a voter, a worker, a citizen — the man as a social factor, who is being considered. Consequently the move- ment is marked by an alliance of forces never before enlisted in cooperation against the saloon. It would have been impossible to bring radicals and conserva- tives together in a fight against inebriety as an indi- vidual curse, or against whiskey drinking as a wicked personal habit. Almost nothing has been heard of teetotalism. The crank and the fanatic have not controlled its councils. Small emphasis has been heard on the stock appeals to emotion. In short, the intelligent people of the South are looking upon prohibition, not as a temperance reform, but as a statesmanship — a public policy, favorable to religion, favorable to education, favorable to industry, favor- able to the coming generation, and as a necessity of Southern conditions in particular.
In addition to the steady development of the anti- saloon conviction in the South, upon which prohibi- tion depends, there are conditions not found else- where which have contributed to its popular appeal and stand stoutly in support of its permanency. One of these conditions, in the judgment of all, is the probable explanation of the general attitude of the Southern people.
The feeling of insecurity in the rural sections of the South on account of vagrant and drunken negroes had become a contagion among the country women. A little of this sort of thing goes a long way in the South. Public sentiment has been intensely stimulated by it. But more than this in real importance, for several years two ideas have been growing strong in the intelligence of the South, both of which have force in bringing on and fixing prohibition as a settled policy.
TEMPERANCE REFORM. 575
The fact that the negro constitutes a child-people element in our population, that the great mass of the negroes are ignorant and weak, and therefore are to be thought for in government and protected from the perils of liberty, is an ascending idea in the legislative scheme of the South. The moral basis of the disfranchisement movement was here. Thousands of the best men — the justest men- went with this movement in consideration of the true welfare of the negro race, their thought being that through such limitation only could the discipline of citizenship become possible. This attitude toward the negro is pronounced in the prohibition move- ment. It stands out nobly. The saloon was the ravager of the negro people. It plundered them at all points, robbed them of their wages, fed their animalism, and was, as everyone knows, a debauching agent let loose by law upon them.
Another fact made constantly more prominent in the South 's study of herself is a condition among a considerable mass of the white population not entirely unlike the condition among the negroes — ignorance, poverty and irresponsibility. This con- stitutes the other half of the race peril. The new movement in public education has made clear this fact as one to be seriously reckoned with. There are these thousands — should we say millions? — of. our own Anglo-Saxon stock, not yet raised to a safe level of civilization, not yet, by education and opportunity, strong enough to reckon their social responsibility and to resist the elemental impulse of lawlessness, when racial antipathies are aroused. The obligation of a Democracy to make law minister to their devel- opment is being felt more and more in the South and has a place in the interpretation of the prohibition policy.
576 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
These are the two elements of Southern society that define the acute dangers of the race problem. It is realized that in any Southern community with a bar-room, a race-war is a perilously possible occur- rence. The danger is not in the upper but in the lower levels of both races. There the inflammable fringes hung loose. Following the racial lines from top to bottom, it became evident to everybody that the lines of both races converged at the saloon, which stood at the acute angle of the inverted social pyra- mid. It was the attractive social centre for the dangerous elements of our population.
Noble Sectionalism.
Along with this condition, peculiarly advantageous to the permanency of the prohibition policy, there goes a corollary in the fact that the Southern states by their history, the homogeneous nature of their people, their sectional solidarity, and their common problems, are moving together and are going to stand together in the prohibition regime.
History justifies this statement. In the secession movement of 1860, the sense of sectional oneness of the Southern was strong enough to sweep anti-seces- sion majorities aside as the wind sweeps leaves. The disfranchisement movement of more recent memory went on in the same tidal fashion. Contemplated, feared, at last dared by one, the other states followed it till all stood in the same line. The anti-bucket-shop movement records a similar history.
Now the prohibition movement has come in the same spirit, and it will be supported in the same force of Southern unity. The Southern states have a common task. It is an impressive spectacle. At last we are permitted a noble sectionalism, for, how- ever widespread the success of the prohibition move-
TEMPERANCE REFORM. 577
ment elsewhere, the South will feel a peculiar burden on her to make good before the world in so great a moral enterprise. Provincialism and even preju- dice may find vindication of its past and pardon for its fault, when vented upon such an evil as the liquor traffic.
It is far from the thought of the statements of prohibition strength and advantage in the South to leave the impression that the passage of prohibition laws ends the struggle between the liquor traffic and the people. On the contrary the prohibition move- ment resulting in these laws is but the beginning of the great task of the South. We are entering an era of struggle, of agitation, of serious local strain. The larger good of the movement is to come out of this struggle. The character of the opposition to prohibition is already revealed, in petty, nagging circumventions, in shrewd devices and in persistent efforts to magnify the violations of the law. For awhile, until Congress amends the Interstate Com- merce Law so that public carriers come within local police regulations, the clamor of opposition will be particularly annoying. The liquor dealers' associa- tions realize that the prohibition movement is just as I have described, a new and extraordinary move- ment. They are prepared to risk half their capital, if necessary, to check it. Anti-prohibition sentiment will be sedulously consolidated and organized to excuse, exempt and applaud successful violations of the law. Therefore, the prospect before us is not one of peace and quiet. The next twenty years will mark a period of great strife in the South. These are words of soberness. But the struggle and even the strife the prohibition movement is bring- ing on is neither to be regretted nor dreaded. It will be a healthy welfare — such a conflict as seems to me
Vol. 10—37
578 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
providential at the present state of Southern affairs. Sooner or later, the main and ultimate questions involved in the maintenance of the prohibition policy had to come before the Southern people for a severe testing, a serious engagement all along the line. Pro- hibition as a temperance question — and merely so — is of insignificant importance in comparison with these issues of fundamental civilization. What are the issues, as I say, prohibition is about to submit to the Southern people? They are, first, the sacredness of law; and second, the integrity of Democracy.
Our recent history has been forcing to the front, and in such a way that the matter was unavoidable, that the South as a section and the Southern people as a people were to be brought in some serious way to consider their civilization imperiled by a lawless spirit. It is not necessary here to explain how the Southern white people were forced into an attitude toward the national constitution that gave us thirty years' training away from the love of law as such. It is a fact to be taken into large account when we are explaining lawlessness in the South. But for some time public attention has been turning strongly the other way, to the fact that the question of law, the necessity of doing things by law, is imperative. The disfranchisement of the negro by law was the first great result of this return of social reason in the South. Having accomplished that, the white people have now to consider themselves. This is their civilization. It is what they are. It will be what they become. So I repeat, the trend of atten- tion has been forced toward a realized weakness of our civilization in respect of law. There is a hopeful change of tone toward the statistics of lawlessness which show the South at a great disadvantage as
TEMPERANCE REFORM. 579
compared with the rest of the country — even the disorderly new civilization of the West. Our news- papers now publish the facts without that sort of comment that kills public conscience. They show the record of the South a sorrowful one, though for 1907 we are now rejoicing that our people were guilty of only fifty out of fifty-six lynchings in the United States, as against sixty-seven out of seventy-three
in 1906.
The New Issues.
Now prohibition presents this grave question with a new issue. Heretofore discussions of lawlessness have been chiefly in relation to the absorbing prob- lem of the negro. Sacredness of law was put almost always in conflict with shocking crimes. The best citizenship of the South, therefore, had not been able to make more than a stifled protest for law.
But prohibition offers an issue of favorable con- ditions for lining up the moral and patriotic ele- ments of Southern society on the side of law. The task is laid on us to prove that we are strong enough in civilization to constrain men or compel them to honor laws whether they are pleased with them or not. That is one test to which the prohibition policy will submit the South.
The other issue is the integrity of Democracy. The question arises in connection with the Prohi- bition policy in the Southern states, whether our Democracy is secure, if a weak minority can prevent the will of the people and defeat the execution of their will expressed in legislation. Look at the situation as it is in Georgia. The majority demand- ing the prohibition of the liquor traffic is immense. This is not disputed. Can the people of Georgia sustain their will? Is there not here an issue going to the foundations of Democracy? It is not a ques-
580 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
tion of the small and occasional violations of the prohibition law, as in the case of all other laws against crime, occurring in the ordinary experience of its execution. It is a question of considerable bodies of citizens in determined desire to see the will of the people overthrown laivlessly. If the people of a state, representing an overwhelming majority of citizenship, cannot have what they legally have chosen to have, the failure is more than a failure of prohibition. It is the breaking down of Democ- racy. It would not be a failure of Democracy, of course, but its illustration, if those opposed to pro- hibition as a policy of the state should seek by appointed means to change its majority to a minor- ity and get rid of it by repeal ; but we are not about to meet an honest, open effort of this kind, but a law- less, unscrupulous resistance to the prohibition law by two classes — the criminal and the anti- prohibitionist element which encourages the criminal by moral support.
The point, then, is this: The battle for Democ- racy and law is coming on in the South over the prohibition issue. It ought to be made an aggres- sive and uncompromising battle. Therefore, the real issues of it should not lack for strong emphasis. The South has much to gain from such a conflict. It would mean a great progress. It is to be prayed that we are going into it really, that a great spirit may be roused, a great agitation drawn on. The next quarter century ought to see in every state, possibly in every local and county campaign, a polit- ical excitement over the question of the prohibition policy. Through such training we would come to an alliance of conscience on all the South 's problems.
The prohibition issue, as the issue of law and Democracy, is the task and the opportunity — the
TEMPERANCE BEFORM. 581
wider opportunity of the South. It is the oppor- tunity to get together and into organized relations the intelligence and moral conscience of the South- ern people — for this and other causes. It is the opportunity to lessen greatly the unhealthy atten- tion to the negro question which had absorbed South- ern thought to our hurt for so long. It is the oppor- tunity to emphasize our recognition of the South 's responsibility for the negro 's moral welfare. Anglo- Saxon supremacy should thus be exercised in con- sideration of our kindly concern about his develop- ment in our midst. It is the opportunity to achieve a real leadership in the nation by example, by assistance to the prohibition movements in other sections, and by influence in national legislation on the subject. It is the opportunity — the first since the late war — to play a part distinctly, of noble proportions, in the moral progress of humanity at large, by the demonstration that a grand division of Anglo-Saxon states can meet and master a prob lem that has always overmastered Anglo-Saxo: people, even in their oldest civilization; for the drin.".: traffic curse is a world problem.
JOHN E. WHITE,
Pastor Second Baptist Church, Atlanta, Ga.
582 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER II. CHILD LABOR IN THE SOUTH.
~ What Child Labor Means.
[• \HILD Labor is a comparatively new expression in the South. It came with the wonderful development which set in as soon as this section had begun to recover from the cataclysm of the great war between the states and the almost equally disastrous period of "reconstruction." The superficial student can scarcely realize that "in 1860 the assessed value of property in the South was $5,200,000,000, out of a total of $12,000,000,000 in the entire country, or 44 per cent. In 1870 the South had only $3*000,- 000,000 of assessed value, while the total for the whole country was $14,170,000,000." The state of South Carolina, "which in 1860 had been third in rank in wealth in proportion to the number of her inhabitants, had dropped to be thirtieth." Prior to the war the people of the South engaged almost entirely in agricultural pursuits and under the slav- ery regime manufactures did not thrive; indeed, in some sections industrialism was discouraged, and yet it is fair to say that even under the slavery sys- tem during the decade 1850-1860 "the number of Southern factories of all kinds swelled to very respectable proportions and the total number in 1860 was 24,590, with an aggregate capital invested of $175,000,000."
Child Labor is generally accepted to mean the employment of children under fourteen years of age, as breadwinners. The poverty of the South in more recent years has made it necessary for all
CHILD LABOE IN THE SOUTH. 583
to work; there has been no "rich idle" class here for forty or more years.
The South has been, and still is, an agricultural section. Some very excellent writers fail to dif- ferentiate between those who work on the farms and those employed indoors. The census for 1900 — the last published official record — shows that there were 3,784,265 children, between the ages of ten and fifteen in the fifteen Southern states. Of this num- ber 1,077,950, or 28 per cent., are breadwinners who work for a living. This may be regarded as disap- pointing, but when it is remembered that of the 1,077,950 breadwinners in the South, between the ages of ten and fifteen, who work, there are 843,494 who labor on the farm, the showing is not so dis- appointing. This, therefore, means that the census figures indicate that in all there are 234,555 children in the fifteen Southern states employed in other than agricultural pursuits, or only 6.2 per cent, of the total number of children, between ten and fif- teen years. These are classed as breadwinners, "engaged in other than farm work." The 234,- 555 children between the ages of ten and fifteen "engaged in other than agricultural pursuits." rep- resent 21 per cent, of the total number of breadwin- ning children in the South. With a showing of 843,- 494 children engaged in agriculture, out of a total of 1,077,950 breadwinners, there are 78 per cent, between the ages given employed on farms of the South.
There is not now, nor has there ever been, any complaint of the work on the farms, though it be by those under fifteen years of age. The work is out of doors and necessarily light. There has never been, and there is no likelihood of there being, any legislation restricting labor of an agricultural
584 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
character, whether in the North, East, South or West.
The complaint as to " child labor" must therefore be restricted to those employed in * ' other than farm work," and if there be any real "child labor" ques- tion in the South, as borne out by the census of 1900, it must apply to these 234,555 children between the ages of ten and fifteen in the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.
It may be well to remember that 6.2 per cent, of the children between ten and fifteen in the South earn wages elsewhere than on the farm, and that in the distribution of these 234,555, the "child labor" is divided approximately as follows, as shown by Census Bulletin 69 : Cotton mill operatives, 27,902 ; tobacco and cigar factory operatives, 3,780; mines, 4,235; dressmakers, milliners and tailors, 2,899; mes- senger, errand and office boys, 7,700 ; and the others are distributed without enumeration generally among the classifications of servants and laborers, clerks and copyists, salesmen and saleswomen, trades, metal workers, hosiery and knitting mills, wood- workers and unclassified workers.
The Number Employed.
A table has been prepared from the figures of the census of 1900 — the latest showing the distribution and exact status of the employment of these children between the ages of ten and fifteen — or what is generally called "child labor." The table is as follows :
Statistics from the census of 1900 — showing total employment of population ten to fifteen years of age :
CHILD LABOE IN THE SOUTH.
585
in
|
STATE |
Total 10 to 15 years male and female. |
Total number breadwinners 10 to 15 years. |
Total of breadwin- ners 10 to 15 years employed on farms. |
Total number 10 to 15 engaged in all oth- er occupation* except agriculture. |
Total number 10 to 15 engaged in cotton mills, part of col. IV. |
|
Alabama |
270,160 |
122 653 |
105 19(3 |
17,457 |
2,747 |
|
Arkansas |
196,275 |
65,068 |
58,849 |
6,219 |
|
|
Florida |
71,661 |
15,403 |
11,307 |
4,096 |
|
|
Georgia |
237,473 |
113,964 |
89,843 |
24,121 |
4.552 |
|
Kentucky |
298,629 |
61,117 |
45,579 |
15,538 |
208 |
|
Louisiana |
199,474 |
61,047 |
48,605 |
12,442 |
184 |
|
Maryland |
150,550 |
24,920 |
6,870 |
18,080 |
1,052 |
|
Mississippi |
233,442 |
98,009 |
88 896 |
9 113 |
411 |
|
Missouri |
413,418 |
61,590 |
37,727 |
23,922 |
|
|
North Carolina |
279,392 |
110,407 |
83,524 |
26,883 |
9,445 |
|
South Carolina |
206,329 |
95,280 |
76,295 |
18,985 |
8,049 |
|
Tennessee |
289.137 |
76,362 |
59,970 |
16,392 |
443 |
|
Texas |
455,546 |
91,571 |
79,926 |
11,645 |
209 |
|
Virginia |
263,281 |
55,745 |
33,725 |
22,020 |
545 |
|
West Virginia |
131,498 |
24,824 |
17,182 |
7,642 |
|
|
Above states |
57 |
||||
|
Grand totals |
3,784,265 |
1,077,960 |
843,494 |
234,555 |
27.902 |
It is seen that the greater number of children — outside of agriculture, as reported under any one occupation — are employed in cotton mills, and this number is approximately 28,000, leaving the large balance of over 200,000, who are employed "other than in agriculture, ' ' outside of the cotton mills ; yet the cotton mill has been the chief object of criticism. While there has been occasion for unfavorable com- ment, conditions in the South must be considered as a whole. The proper and only way to look at this question is to get down to bedrock facts — to get the genesis of this phase of child labor.
Who were these people before they went to the cotton mills? What was their condition? Did they enjoy school advantages? Were they prosperous? In a word, have their relative conditions been improved? That ought to be the prime considera- tion. The correct study of this question ought to be
586 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IX THE SOUTH.
a " before and after" picture — before going into the cotton mill and after enjoying regular pay from the mill corporations.
The largest proportion of those working in the Southern cotton mills came from the mountain sec- tions of the two Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia and Tennessee, and the "before and after" study should be begun by going to the little mountain cottages, where the largest numbers of the operatives come from, and witnessing the utter poverty and hopeless- ness of most of these poor mountaineers. Now see these same people in their comfortable homes in the mill communities, with churches and schools near-by and pay-day coming with clock-like regularity. Some of the operatives came from the near-by farms, hav- ing given up in despair the effort to make money out of the tenant or credit system of small farming. Then there is a small proportion who, after having failed at all else, have gone to the cotton mills because of the steady pay and lack of requirement of previous training. The cotton mill is the one industrial work where the family is the unit and where children are paid for their work without previous training or experience.
The cotton factory came as a boon to the poor farming classes that had been compelled to eke out an existence on the farms, and they welcomed the opportunity of changing their uncomfortable homes, their scanty clothing and lack of ready money for the life offered by the new cotton mill industry.
The cotton mill industry has grown to be the giant that it is within twenty-five years. Naturally, the development has not been as well timed, nor as evenly directed as it might have been. The devel- opment of this single industry is indicated by this table showing the growth in the South :
CHILD LABOR IN THE SOUTH. 587
No. of Wage Spindles Looms Earners
1880 667,754 14,323 16,317
1890 1,554,000 36,266 36,415
1900 4,453,729 112,806 97,494
1905 7,508,749 179,512 120,110
1908 (about) 10,443,761 222,539 148,000
Of this number there are in the three states of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia 8,326,- 009 spindles and 178,208 looms, and of the 27,902 children, between ten and fifteen, employed as opera- tives, there are 22,046 credited these three states, and it is therefore timely to discuss the conditions and laws in these states employing the great bulk of the children in the mill industry.
South Carolina, which today leads the South in spindleage, has shown the most marked development not only in the industry, but in enacting laws for the protection of these laborers, and without exception these statutes have been encouraged by those most interested in the enterprise. It may be well to scru- tinize the figures for South Carolina indicating the development of the cotton mill industry and the bearing on the entire question. The following significant figures are taken from the census reports :
Total Number South Employes
Wage Earners Carolina Under 16
in Cotton Mills Spindles Years of Age
1 880 2,018 82,334 Not reported
1890 8,071 332,784 Not reported
1900 30,201 1,431,349 8,110
1905 42,950 2,864,092 8,835
The figures for the number of children under sixteen are not available from official sources, until the census of 1900. The records show that with twice as many spindles in operation in South Caro- lina in 1905 as were running in 1900 there were
588 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
less than a thousand additional children under six- teen, brought into service to operate these additional 1,400,000 spindles, or while the spindles have increased over 50 per cent., the additional children under sixteen years of age employed to help operate this enormous gain have increased only about 9 per cent. Just at this point it might be well to state that the majority of children employed in the mills work at these spindles, and the work in the spinning room is the lightest in the mill. The tendency was, and is, clearly towards using adult and not "child labor." When the poor mountaineer or the tenant farmer who had failed to make "ends meet" went to the mill it had to be a matter of family employ- ment. The work of all was necessary and that first took the children into the mills. Now wages have improved, the families have money; they have become ambitious and the mother and younger chil- dren have been, to a large extent, taken out of the mills. Legislation was not necessary. The census figures show this tendency very conclusively. Table 30, Bulletin 69, gives these figures of operatives between ten and fifteen years employed in mill work :
1900 1905
North Carolina 7129 8212
South Carolina 8110 8835
Georgia 4500 5406
Alabama 2437 3094
The increase in numbers is almost nil, while the industry has doubled in the period.
In South Carolina the increase for five years was 725 children, while considerably over a million spindles had been added in this state. The con- stant tendency is further shown by the fact that from 1890 to 1900 the increase in the number of children who went into the cotton mills in South Carolina ran up to 267 per cent., while for the five
CHILD LABOE IN THE SOUTH. 583
years of greatest development — 1900 to 1905 — the increase was less than 10 per cent.
What the Mill Owners Have Done.
Aside from the philanthropic phase of the ques- tion, cotton mill officials have long since concluded that ''child labor" is expensive and that a child not appreciating the value of cotton or work is wasteful. In a recent article in "The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science," Mr. Lewis W. Parker, one of the most successful and consid- erate manufacturers in the South, writes: "In the progress of the industry (cotton mills) and in the succession of years, a new generation is growing up, and the mills have found it practicable and advisable to supplant the younger children by youths and adults. The proportion of children of tender age — say, fourteen years and under — in employment in the mills now, for the reasons above, is very much less than it was five or ten years ago, and this pro- portion, irrespective of legislation, will continue to grow less.
"The child is the most expensive employee that the mill has. From the writer 's experience, the mill can well afford to pay more per piece or per machine for work done by the adult than for similar work done by the young child. . . . The results to the mill of the day's work are much better in the case of the adult than the child, and experience in this has tended of itself to decrease the number of chil- dren in employment. In addition to this fact, the bettered circumstances of the family have tended to the same effect."
When the first cotton mills were built in the South the labor was brought from the poorer and unedu- cated classes of white people. In 1855 William
590 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
Gregg, of South Carolina, one of the pioneers of the cotton mill industry, made this official report on his labor: "We may really regard ourselves as the pioneers in developing the real character of the poor people of South Carolina. Graniteville is truly the home of the poor widow and helpless children, or for the family brought to ruin by a drunken, worth- less father. Here they meet with protection, are educated free of charge, and brought up to habits of industry under the care of intelligent men. The population of Graniteville is made up mainly from the poor of Edgefield, Barnwell and Lexington dis- tricts. From extreme poverty and want, they have become a thrifty, happy and contented people. When they were first brought together the seventy -nine out of a hundred grown girls who could neither read nor write were a by-word around the country; that reproach has long since been removed. ' '
Educating, training and helping the operative classes has always been the policy of the cotton-mill owners of the Southern states. The schools have been built contemporaneously with the mills. When the Southern states were desperately poor and the country schools were of but little value, the cotton mills built and operated schools for their operatives out of their funds. The cotton mills have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in the erection and development of their schools and they have been persistent in their efforts to induce the children to attend the schools they were running at their own expense, and that stood inviting the children's attendance.
The cotton mills, through their associations and executive officers, have petitioned and earnestly asked the various legislatures to enact compulsory education laws. In South Carolina — with the largest
CHILD LABOR IX THE SOUTH. 591
number of spindles — the Cotton Manufacturers' Association passed and urged a resolution "memo- rializing the legislature to pass a compulsory school law, requiring the attendance of all children under the age of fourteen years, and stating that in the judgment of the manufacturers, such a law would be the most effective child labor which could be passed, and furthermore stating that if such a law were passed the manufacturers would make no objection whatever to the passage of a child labor bill forbid- ding the employment of children in cotton mills under the age of fourteen." The manufacturers think and urge that compulsory attendance at school is a necessary incident to an evenly balanced child labor law, and that without such a law there is a temptation to idleness on the part of many children. The compulsory education law has not been enacted. Along the same lines the mills built churches and cooperated in the support of the ministers.
In recent years the mill corporations, ever anxious to have satisfied help, have spent money freely in encouraging the establishment of Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. organizations in the mill communities, in erecting and fostering club houses, in establishing night schools, and in providing various sports and amusements. But this remarkable and praiseworthy "Welfare Work," as it is called, the improvement in the condition, the education and the ambitions of the mill labor, the increase in wages and the like are matters for other articles in this series. Of these phases I have written more fully, particularly of South Carolina, in a series of articles on the "Cotton Mills of South Carolina," for The News and Courier, and subsequently published in pamphlet form.
592 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
The National Civic Federation delegated Miss Gertrude Beeks to study mill conditions in the South and she concludes:
11 On observing the general prosperity which has been wrought through the cotton industry, the ques- tion arose as to whether it would have been better to have left the people in pauperism and illiteracy than to have taken them into the manufacturing dis- trict where they could secure an industrial training with pay which would insure a livelihood, be uplifted by the elevating influences, and secure an education for the majority of their children. Too much praise cannot be given to the mill owners who, in spite of the unfair criticism which has been made, are not only giving food and shelter and industrial training to the illiterate descendants of the first inhabitants of the colonies, but through their welfare work are a great civilizing influence and are steadily raising the standard of citizenship. ' '
It is, of course, to be remembered that in the South whatever of child labor may be employed is of native white inhabitants. Practically no for- eigners are worked. No colored children are em- ployed in cotton mills ; all work in textile plants is done by white labor. The operatives, numbering in the tens of thousands, have their direct congregated influence, independent of economic or humanitarian considerations or outside suggestions.
The Laws on Child Labor.
What are the child labor laws in the Southern states! As far as the statutes are available, the age limit — which appears to be generally recognized as the crux of these statutes — is as follows :
MINIMUM AGE LIMIT. — Alabama, 12; Arkansas,
CHILD LABOR IX THE SOUTH. 593
14; Florida, 12; Georgia, 12; Kentucky, 14; Louisi- ana, 14 ; Maryland, 12 ; Mississippi, 12 ; Missouri, 12 ; North Carolina, 12; South Carolina, 12; Tennessee, 14; Texas, 12; Virginia, 13; West Virginia, 12.
It will be noted that in every Southern state there is a statute prohibiting the employment of children under twelve years of age in work that is regarded as harmful to those under that age. In some few cases exceptions are permitted for abundant reasons.
In several of the states constant work is avoided by provisions requiring school attendance, and the younger generation are growing up not only with opportunities for better education, but they are tak- ing advantage of these schools provided by their employers or the state.
In Alabama, for instance (see Act 1907), "No child between the ages of twelve and sixteen years shall be employed or be permitted to work or de- tained in or about any mill, factory or manufac- turing establishment in this state unless such child shall attend school for eight weeks in every year of employment, six weeks of which shall be consecu- tive."
In North Carolina the law provides that "No child between the ages of twelve and thirteen years of age shall be employed or work in a factory except in apprenticeship capacity, and only then after hav- ing attended school four months in the preceding twelve months." In section 3 of the law the parent is required to furnish a certificate of school attend- ance.
In Georgia the law provides : ' ' On and after Jan. 1, 1908, no child, except as heretofore provided, under fourteen years of age shall be employed or
Vol. 10—38
594 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
allowed to labor in or about any factory or manu- facturing establishment within this state, unless he or she can write his or her name and simple sen- tences, and shall have attended school for twelve weeks of the preceding year, six weeks of which school attendance shall be consecutive, and no such child as aforesaid, between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, shall be so employed unless such child shall have attended school for twelve weeks of the preceding year, six weeks of which school attend- ance shall be consecutive, and at the end of each year until such child shall have passed the public school age, an affidavit certifying to such attendance as is required by this section shall be furnished to the employer by the parent or guardian or person sustaining parental relation to such child."
And so it goes, the whole tendency being towards education and away from the employment of chil- dren. Children have been employed because the ne- cessities of the family needed their help and they have gone to the cotton mills because there the fam- ily was the unit of employment and the wage cer- tain, but higher wages and years of employment are making the parents more independent and anxious to protect their children. Statistics and the facts show a gratifying decrease of illiteracy in the mill communities and among the operatives.
Whatever of child labor there has been in the South has been that of native-born Americans. There may come a time when the ambitious young American will move away from the Southern cot- ton mill or the mine, with the money provided through work in the factory or at the mine. It may be interesting to note the proportion of South- ern children who work on the farm as against the children working on farms in other sections, best
CHILD LABOR IN THE SOUTH. 595
comparable with the mill section of the South, as shown by the 1900 census figures :
Breadwinners.
On the farms 10
to 15 years of age. Percentage of those
Percentage of ag- between 10 and 15
ricultural workers years engaged in
as compared to all all other occupa-
working children. tions.
Boys Girls Boys Girls
North Carolina 44.9 14.5 10.2 9.0
Massachusetts 0.7 0.0* 11.3 8.3
South Carolina 44.6 29.1 9.3 9.1
Ehode Island 1.1 0.0* 22.1 17.3
Georgia 38.5 16.1 8.3 6.5
Pennsylvania 5.0 0.1 17.5 9.7
Alabama 51.4 26.1 7.7 5.2
New Jersey 2.1 0.1 15.8 11.2
Complaint is made of children working at night. There has been some justice in this complaint, but it has been much exaggerated. There is now prac- tically no night work and, as in most of these in- fractions of the law of nature, time and economic conditions have brought the remedies.
In South Carolina, for instance, there is not now, nor has there been in some time, a single spindle running at night in the entire Piedmont section, where practically all the large mills are located.
It may be well to note that aside from the dispo- sition to avoid night work, regardless of the age of the help, the Southern states, in which there is the possibility of night work in mills, have statutes against such employment of children.
In Alabama the law reads : " No child under six- teen years of age shall be employed or detained in, or be in or about any mill, factory or manufacturing establishment within this state, between the hours of seven o'clock P.M. and six o'clock A.M., standard
*Less than one-tenth of one per cent.
596 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
time, and no child over sixteen and under eighteen years of age shall be so employed or detained be- tween said hours for more than eight hours in any one night."
In Georgia the statute reads : * * On and after Jan. 1, 1908, no child under fourteen years of age shall be employed or allowed to labor in or about any factory or manufacturing establishment within this state, between the hours of seven P.M. and six A.M."
In North Carolina the law reads : ' ' After 1907, no boy or girl under fourteen years old shall work in a factory between the hours of eight P.M. and five A.M."
In South Carolina the statute provides that "No child under the age of twelve years shall be per- mitted to work between the hours of eight o'clock P.M. and six o'clock in the morning, in any factory, mine or textile manufactory of this state." Lost time is permitted to be made up, provided "that under no circumstances shall a child below the age of twelve work later than the hour of nine P.M." So much for night work.
The various Southern states have provision for the enforcement of the laws, regardless of the general disposition to do so. In South Carolina, at the legislative session of 1909, a factory inspection law was enacted and under its terms ample author- ity is given the commissioner and the two inspectors appointed by him.
The South has had more or less of agitation and organization seeking to secure legislation. When properly directed and when based on facts this work has been taken in good spirit. From Texas to Vir- ginia there has been a healthy and substantial indus- trial development and the agricultural prosperity of the Southland has grown hand in hand with the
1. Mississippi State Hospital for Insane, Jackson.
2. First Asylum in America exclusively for the Insane, Williamsburg, Va.
tered 1769; opened 1773; destroyed by fire 1885.
Char-
CHILD LABOE IN THE SOUTH. 597
manufacturing enterprises. The children employed in the South are practically all native born Amer- icans. They are the same flesh and blood as those by whom they are employed, and thus far their rela- tions have been cordial.
AUGUST KOHN,
Manager, Columbia (S. C.) Bureau, The News and Courier.
CHAPTER III.
CARE AND TREATMENT OF THE DEFECT- IVES IN THE SOUTH.
H1LE it is granted that the South has not reached as high a standard, in extent or character of the work for defectives, as might have been desired, or as a careful critic might require, still there are grounds for con- gratulation as to her past achievements, and the out- look for the future is bright.
As used in this article the word defective em- braces : First, those individuals in whom congenital or acquired brain defect or disease has resulted in mental deficiency or alienation. To this class belong the insane, the epileptic, the idiot and the feeble- minded. Second, those whose physical abnormali- ties either at birth or in very early life, have caused them to be dependent upon special training suited to their peculiar condition and needs. To this class belong the deaf-mute, the blind, the paralytic and the physically deformed.
It must be remembered that mental deficiency and physical defect of congenital origin are frequently associated, to a greater or lesser degree, and that if we expect to advance in the treatment of either class,
698 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
we must look in the direction of the correlation of the physical with the mental qualities.
Unfortunate specimens of humanity sometimes offer discouragement, yet as they are among us, the task of bettering and improving their condition is one of the most humane missions that we can under- take to perform.
Social conditions in the South differ from those in other parts of America and the traditional ideas of local self-government, of individualism, and per- sonal independence have not been at all times con- ducive to paternalism, but under changing condi- tions, and with material advancement, the view- point of the South has been modified in many respects, and better and more extensive methods in dealing with her defectives have resulted.
In our relations with the defective classes four con- ditions must guide, viz. : a spirit of genuine humani- tarianism, a comprehensive knowledge of the needs and requirements, a stern sense of duty and respon- sibility of the stronger to the weaker, and sufficient resources under control of organized forces to put into effect plans for the welfare of the afflicted and of the community at large.
The first asylum for the insane and the first school for the deaf were due to the benevolence and intelli- gence of the Southern people. The former was opened at Williamsburg, in 1773, and the latter near Petersburg, on the Appomattox, in 1812. Antedating by nearly thirty years the granting of the charter to establish in the Old Dominion a state "hospital for the reception of idiots, lunatics and persons of insane and disordered minds,'* the colony of South Carolina passed an act authorizing the "legal com- mitment and care, at the public expense, of indigent lunatic slaves." In 1762 a charitable organization
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CARE OF DEFECTIVES. 599
in that colony was founded for the purpose of pro- viding an infirmary for the "reception of lunatics and other distempered persons." The Kevolution- ary struggle, however, seems to have prevented this body of philanthropists from carrying out these pur- poses. Nevertheless it is recorded that in 1776 there was a "madhouse" in " Charlestown. " This was probably the "poorhouse and asylum" which dates back to 1712 or possibly earlier. It is recorded also that the insane were kept in an "outbuilding by themselves." Their treatment was doubtlessly crude.
Before the close of the Eighteenth century, Mary- land had opened an asylum for the insane, which was reorganized in the early part of the next century. During the second decade of the Nineteenth century South Carolina, after many setbacks, built an asylum which for years offered shelter to the insane in her own territory and to many beyond her borders. Be- fore the dawn of the Twentieth century all the Southern states had provided comfortable and humanely conducted hospitals under state control. The oldest existing asylum building in this country, erected by a state, is still a haven of rest for the insane in the Palmetto state, standing as a monu- ment to a benevolent people.
In no part of this country do the colored insane, the former slaves, receive more humane care than in the South. Here again the steps were initial in establishing separate institutions for the negro race, differing in no material way from those for the whites. Virginia led in 1870; North Carolina com- ing next, in 1875 ; and recently Alabama has opened a branch hospital exclusively for this special class.
In the entire South there are to-day thirty state institutions for the insane, as follows : three in West Virginia, five in Maryland, four in Virginia, three in
600 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
North Carolina, one in South Carolina, one in Florida, two in Alabama, two in Mississippi, three in Texas, three in Tennessee, three in Kentucky, three in Missouri and two in Louisiana.
The needs of the idiot and the imbecile have not received that recognition nor that share of considera- tion at the hands of the state or of private benevo- lence which their deplorable plight so clearly de- mands. True, in some of the states, the idiot is not debarred from the hospitals for the insane ; in others, however, he vainly knocks at the doors. No South- ern state, save Missouri, has yet established a public institution for the special care and training of the feebleminded, where they can be taught, to the extent of their capacity, to be useful and happy. There are a few small well-conducted private institutions in Maryland and Virginia for the feebleminded as well as epileptics; but they do not begin to meet the de- mands even of the non-indigent. About the only abode of a public character that has yet been pro- vided for those born without reason is the almshouse, which is too often an indication of indifference to the needs of the unfortunate and a source of mortifica- tion to friends and relatives.
It is pleasing, though, to note that in some of the states public-spirited and humanely disposed people, who are alive to the interest of the idiot, the feeble- minded, and the epileptic, are uniting in a movement to educate public sentiment and to influence legis- latures to a recognition of the duty the state owes these unfortunate and innocent beings.
As to the epileptics who are scattered in this sec- tion in the proportion of 1 to 500 of the population, it would be vain to attempt to depict their unenviable condition. Efforts to ameliorate their sufferings should awaken a quick response in the people of the
CARE OF DEFECTIVES. 601
South. These people have been left too long without special care and treatment, many permitted to drift along through an .unhappy and profitless existence. Public opinion, however, is being constantly directed to them, and their relief in a measure seems now assured. Texas and Missouri are the only states below the Mason and Dixon line that have actually built institutions for epileptics, though some of the other commonwealths have shown appreciation of their needs. In some in- stances inadequate appropriations have blocked the way to structural progress. Virginia, in which state, fifteen years ago, a move was inaugurated for the colonizing of epileptics in a separate institution, has made progress. The legislature has twice enacted favorably, but actual construction has not yet begun, owing to difficulty in procuring a suitable site. Re- cently, though, a most desirable farm, containing one thousand acres, located near Lynchburg, in the Piedmont section, has been purchased, and the colony will soon open its doors, there being several buildings ready for occupancy. For a while, at least, the colony will be conducted as a branch of the Western State Hospital, and will care for only insane and demented epileptics. A separate state colony exclusively for epileptics — the sane and the insane — will also soon be realized in Virginia.
From a small beginning, in 1812, every Southern state has established and developed, to a stage of commendable efficiency, institutions for the blind, the deaf and the dumb. These, like some other defectives, have received a share of the state's bounty, yet adequate provision for the care and teaching of both races has not been made anywhere. In some of the states the colored defectives of this class have schools set apart especially for
602 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
them. Virginia has most recently advanced along this line, the legislature of 1908 having directed the establishment of an institution for the deaf-mute and blind children of that race.
The paralytic and the deformed, as a class by themselves, have received scant attention at the hands of the Southern states. They are, however, not altogether neglected, local, institutions and pri- vate charitable organizations showing concern for them.
The South has long recognized the beneficent re- sults of state care and supervision of the defective classes. In nearly all the Southern states, though, there is lacking a state board of charities with vis- itoral and advisory functions, to cooperate with the various boards of control of the state and local insti- tutions In North Carolina, Missouri, Louisiana and Virginia such boards are in existence and are doing splendid work. In Virginia, Maryland and Alabama state conferences of charities and corrections are of value in educating public sentiment.
The War between the States retarded progress in philanthropic work for the defectives in the South. The effort to provide for them adequate accommoda tions, and to attain that standard of care which we approve has often been a pathetic story of trial and struggle. Sometimes the drawbacks have been so onerous that it required stout hearts and determined minds to endure them. Considering the means at command it is believed that the world will accord the South due credit for the measure and standard of care and protection she has given the defectives in her midst. WILLIAM FRANCIS DREWBY,
Superintendent Central State Hospital, Petersburg, Va.
I
CENTRAL 5 TJt ff HOBPI T/IL
.•'•-. ••
1. Cottage for Tuberculosis Patients, Central State Hospital, Peters-
burg, Va.
2. The Bryce Hospital, Tuscaloosa, Ala.
FARMERS' COOPERATIVE WORK. 603
CHAPTER IV.
FARMERS' COOPERATIVE DEMONSTRA- TION WORK IN THE SOUTH- ERN STATES.
T is conceded by well informed men that rural conditions in the United States, and especially in the South, are not only far below the best ideals for country life but be- low those necessary to secure the most profit- able production of farm crops, improve country homes and schools, promote the best citizenship and generally enrich rural life. The principal dif- ference of opinion lies in the methods by which this uplift shall be secured.
Many Reforms Needed in Rural Life.
For the improvement of rural life many things are needed:
(1) The improvement of country schools, or, rather, the establishing of real schools for the coun- try. Many leading educators believe that the country school has yet to be conceived and estab- lished. It has been said with great force that "the existing country schools are but poorly equipped city schools located in the country."
(2) County or district agricultural schools, in which the main work shall be to impart knowledge that tends to make the successful farmer and the good citizen and to give a training to youth adapted to rural life, in sympathy with toil and in love with the farm. Several states have taken the initia- tive in establishing such schools. It is believed by their friends and hoped by all that they may lead
604 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
to a solution of the problem of the best education for rural life.
(3) It is also desirable that textbooks in country- schools shall have for illustrative material incidents and experiences drawn mainly from rural life instead of from commerce, politics, diplomacy and war.
(4) It will doubtless be found advantageous at times to cooperate in buying and selling, in borrowing money, etc.
(5) The proper valuation of property as a basis of taxation to establish and maintain rural better- ments should be considered.
All the improvements required in rural life we see and realize. The purpose of this article, how- ever, is to call attention to a reform which is funda- mental to all these things and which must necessarily precede them, logically and chronologically.
The Remedy Offered Toy the Farmers' Cooperative Demonstration
Work.
What primary remedy for the improvement of rural conditions ought a republic to propose where all the adult male citizens are expected to exercise through the ballot the functions of a ruler? Evi- dently it should be one that can directly and immedi- ately benefit all the people. More than nine-tenths of the rural population of the South are limited by their conditions to an education provided by the country district school. What help can be given them that will be immediate and will benefit both parents and children? It must be such that it will reach the farm and appeal to the interests of the farmer. It must find the man and not compel the man to find it. It must be a home remedy.
The only remedy that can be successfully applied to help all the rural people, one that will be effective
FARMERS' COOPERATIVE WORK. 605
and immediate, is to increase the net earnings of farmers and farm laborers. The paramount issue now is how most wisely and effectively to aid all the rural people. If each farmer is shown how to produce twice as much to the acre as he now pro- duces and at less cost, it will be a profit in which all rural classes will share and will be the basis of the greatest reform ever known to rural life.
How can the knowledge of better agricultural methods be conveyed to the masses in a way so effect- ive that the methods will be accepted and their prac- tice become common? For many years the United States Department of Agriculture, the agricultural colleges, the experiment stations, the agricultural press, the farmers' institutes, and the national and state bulletins upon agriculture have thrown light upon almost every topic relating to the farm. These have been of great assistance to farmers who are alert and progressive, but the masses, especially in the South, have scarcely been affected. There came a time when it was found necessary to reach and influence the poorer class. The cooperative demonstration plan was then tested.
Organization of This Special Work.
As organized under the Bureau of Plant Industry the working forces of the Farmers' Cooperative Demonstration Work consist now of one director with assistants, ten state agents, and 215 district and local agents. Local agents must be practical farmers and thoroughly instructed in their duties by the state and district agents. State meetings of agents are called for instruction semiannually, at which the director or an assistant from Washing- ton is present. Weekly reports showing work accom- plished each day are made by all agents to the director.
606 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
The campaigns for the ensuing year are planned in September, and active work commences in Octo- ber by calling public meetings in every district to be worked, at which is shown the great advantage to all the people of increasing the crop yield two, three or fourfold, and it is made clear that this can be done by adopting better methods. In country villages the banker, the merchant, and the editor join with the leading farmers of the section in indorsing the progressive plans of the demonstra- tion work ; farmers agree to follow instructions, and demonstration plots of one or more acres are located so as to place a sample of the best farming in each neighborhood of a county or district. There must be enough of these to allow every farmer to see one or more during the crop-growing period. The neces- sary work on the plot must be done by the farmer and not by a government agent, because the whole object lesson is thereby brought closer to the people. The demonstrating farmer understands it better because he does the work and his neighbors believe that what he has done they can do.
Instructions to the Farmer.
Each month during the season instructions are sent to every demonstrator and cooperator, clearly outlining the plan for managing the crop. In addi- tion, a local agent is expected to call on each demon- strating farmer monthly and explain anything not understood in the instructions.
Field Schools.
Previous notice by letter is given to all the coop- erating farmers (such as are instructed in the work and agree to follow instructions) in a neighborhood to meet the agent on a certain date at a given demon- stration farm, where the crop and plans are thor-
FARMERS' COOPERATIVE WOKE. 607
oughly discussed. This is called a "field school" and has been marvelously effective in arousing local interest. At such meetings and on all occasions where the agents meet farmers, the following funda- mental requirements for good farming are discussed by the aid of notes sent out from the central office :
(1) Prepare a deep and thoroughly pulverized seed bed, well drained; break in the fall to the depth of 8, 10 or 12 inches, accord- ing to the soil, with implements that will not bring too much of the subsoil to the surface. The foregoing depths should be reached gradually.
(2) Use seed of the very best variety, intelligently selected and carefully stored.
(3) In cultivated crops give the rows and the plants in the rows a space suited to the plant, the soil and the climate.
(4) Use intensive tillage during the growing period of the crops.
(5) Secure a high content of humus in the soil by the use of legumes, barnyard manure, farm refuse and commercial fertilizers.
(6) Carry out a systematic crop rotation with a winter cover crop.
(7) Accomplish more work in a day by using more horsepower and better implements.
(8) Increase the farm stock to the extent of utilizing all the waste products and idle lands of the farm.
(9) Produce all the food required for the men and animals on the farm.
(10) Keep an account of each farm product, in order to know from which the gain or loss arises.
In the course of these discussions it has often developed that the majority of small farmers had never fully complied with any of these rules. They thought they knew all about farming and charged their small product and failures to the seasons or the land.
These field schools bring about a revolution. A meeting of the farmers of a township called at a home to discuss a field crop and to inspect and compaie home conditions can not fail to place local public opinion upon a higher level, and that is the principal opinion to be considered in influencing the farmer.
Instead of expending time and force in moulding state, city and county influences which have but
608 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
slight practical results in changing rural conditions, the Farmers' Cooperative Demonstration Work makes a direct attack on the men who should reform. It reaches them in a practical way and establishes a different local standard of excellence for farming and for living. The initial move is an aroused public sentiment in favor of doing better.
Instruction Confined to a Few Essential Subjects.
It is of the greatest importance to confine the work to a few standard crops and the instruction to the basic methods and principles which stand for the best results, and to repeat this line of instruction on every occasion until every farmer works accord- ing to some system and knows the methods that make for success instead of charging failure to the moon, to the season, to the soil, or to bad luck. It requires several years to so impress these teachings upon the masses, even when supported by demon- stration, that they become the general custom of the country. The first year a few try the plan on small areas; the second year these greatly enlarge the area and some of their neighbors follow their example; the third year possibly 40 or 50 per cent, adopt some of the methods, and so work progresses by the force of demonstration and public opinion until its general adoption is secured. No one is asked to believe anything not clearly proved.
Special Features of the Work.
In most of the Southern states the average farme^ works with one mule. The cultivation of cotton ana corn is a slow process; too much of it is done with the hoe. To remedy this, resort is had to demonstra- tion. The agent in some cases drives a team of strong mules or horses hitched to a wagon filled with improved implements. At the field meetings
FARMEES' COOPERATIVE WORK. 609
this team and the improved implements are used to show how much more and how much better work can be done in a day by having good equipment. It is especially emphasized that cotton and corn should be grown without using the hoe, thus saving one-third the expense. It will be noted that the earning capacity of each worker upon a farm is almost directly in proportion to the number of horses or mules for the use of each. This is startlingly true outside of the rice, sugar-cane, and market- garden districts.* In North Dakota each farm worker has five horses, cultivates 135 acres, and has an earning capacity of $755.62 yearly ; in Iowa each laborer has four horses, tills 80 acres of land, and earns $611.11 annually; while in Alabama each farm laborer has three-fifths of a mule, works 15 acres, and earns $143. 98. In the case of tenant farmers the earning capacity (which is the total product of any crop in the state divided by the number of workers) should be divided approximately by 2.
One of the conditions of securing a greater net income is to stop buying food products and live on what the farm supplies. If greater variety is wanted, produce it. Another condition is to accomplish more in a day.
Effect of the Work on the Farmer.
Every step is a revelation and a surprise to the farmer. He sees his name in the county paper as one of the farmers selected by the United States Department of Agriculture to conduct demonstra- tion work; he receives instructions from Washing- ton; he begins to be noticed by his fellow-farmers; his better preparation of the soil pleases him ; he is proud of planting the best seed and having the best cultivation. As the crop begins to show vigor and
* Taken from U. S. Census Report, 1900. Vol.
610 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
excellence his neighbors call attention to it, and finally when the demonstration agent calls a field meeting at his farm the farmer begins to be impressed not only with the fact that he has a good crop, but that he is a man of more consequence than he thought. This man that was never noticed before has had a meeting called at his farm; he concludes that he is a leader in reforms.
Immediately the brush begins to disappear from the fence corners and the weeds from the fields; the yard fence is straightened; whitewash or paint goes on the buildings; the team looks a little better and the dilapidated harness is renovated. Finally the crop is made and a report about it appears in the county papers. It produces a sensation. A meeting is called by the neighbors and the farmer is made chairman; he receives numerous inquiries about his crop and is invited to attend a meeting at the county seat to tell how he did it.
He made a great crop, but the man grew faster than the crop. There can be no reform until the man begins to grow, and the only possible way for him to grow is by achievement — doing something of which he is proud. He is a common farmer. What line of achievement is open to him but doing better work and securing greater results on his own farm? As soon as the man begins to grow he will work for every rural betterment.
In the Southern states nearly one-half of the farms are tilled under the tenant system. In South Caro- lina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana more than 60 per cent, of the farms are worked by tenants. The poor equipment of such farms and the low earning capacity of the tenant appeal strongly for help.
The tenant is urged by the demonstration agent
FARMERS' COOPERATIVE WORK. 611
to make a better crop and raise everything neces- sary for his support. He is shown that as soon as he proves himself to be a progressive and thrifty farmer it will add to his credit. He can then buy upon better terms and will soon own a farm. The landlord is seen and urged to look more closely after his farm; to improve his farm buildings; because this is necessary to the securing and retention of the best tenants; to furnish better implements or assist his tenant to purchase them ; and to insist that good seed shall be used and that there shall be better tillage of the crop. Many proprietors take the deepest interest in having their tenants taught better methods. They call meetings and scatter farm lit- erature, thus creating a sentiment favorable to the demonstration work.
Rural Improvement the Natural Result of This Work.
The agents of the demonstration work are thor- oughly drilled in progressive steps. When the rudi- ments of good farming are mastered the farmer secures a greater income for his labor. An im- portant part of this greater net earning capacity is good farm economy and greater thrift. Farm economy dictates the production of the largest crop possible to the acre at the least expenditure of money and without impairing the productive capacity of the soil. It also includes the planting of crops of the greatest value to the acre, provided the cost of production is not proportionately increased, and it teaches a more economic support of the family, team and stock, which is based upon home production of all the foods, and forage crops consumed. For the family more use must be made of milk, eggs, the vegetable garden and fruits; for the stock there should be better
612 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
pasture and hay, especially the abundant use of legumes. Thrift demands the proper housing of family, teams and tools, and the more economic expenditure of the greater gains of the farm arising from greater earnings and more economy. The only way to successfully, attack such problems is by an example.
Long-time customs cannot be overcome by writing a book. One might as well write a book to teach better sewing. Poor farming is the natural result of a lot of bad practices and must be treated rather as a defect in art than a lack of intelligence. It is not assumed, nor is it the intention to assert, that agriculture is not one of the greatest of sciences, but at the beginning it must be treated as an art and the best methods adopted.
Then it is shown that this greater income should be applied to the reduction of debt, the betterment of the family and the home, and the improvement of rural conditions. Cooperation is then taught in buying and selling, but cooperation is of little avail in buying if the farmer has no money, and it is impossible in selling if his crop is mortgaged for advances. The fundamental basis of the work of the Department of Agriculture is to increase the efficiency of the farmer.
If there is a better variety of cotton seed in Georgia or Texas, then the other cotton-producing states should immediately have the benefit. This is precisely such work as the Farmers' Cooperative Demonstration Work is doing in the South. It has been instrumental in the introduction annually of 100,000 to 500,000 bushels of better cotton seed.
Those better varieties of cotton seed are of earlier maturity than the old. This cotton is picked on an average. six weeks earlier in the fall, which gives
FARMERS' COOPERATIVE WORK. 613
the children six weeks more time for school and allows the farmer to prepare his land for the next season's crop. The old plan was to pick cotton all winter. The loss of cotton and the lowering of the grade by the winter rains made this plan an economic crime, and its debarring the children from attending school caused it to be a social crime. These old methods will soon be a thing of the past.
This is truly a national work, and wherever put in operation with sufficient intensity to influence public opinion these results have rapidly followed: (1) Increased yield per acre; (2) The purchase of more and better horses or mules ; (3) Great increase in the use of better implements ; (4) General inter- est in seed selection and the use of the best seed; (5) Home and school improvements; (6) More months of schooling; (7) Better highways; (8) Increase of a healthy social life in the country; (9) Intense interest in agriculture.
It is of the utmost importance to the South from economic, social and educational viewpoints that rural conditions should be changed as soon as pos- sible. The Cooperative Demonstration Work is fun- damental, but other influential factors must be made effective. The country schools and colleges should be redirected that they may enrich and vitalize rural life. The country church should measure up to its mission of creating and fostering a true social and spiritual life upon the farms and there should be an aroused purpose and energy for greater accom- plishment and to meet the full measure of the highest civic obligation.
SEAMAN A. KNAPP,
In charge Farmers' Cooperative Demonstration Work, United States Department of Agriculture.
614 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER V. SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
HE improvement of social conditions has an intimate connection with the progress of a people, and in considering how far the South is contributing to the solution of social problems, the question of social settlements must not be overlooked. The social settlement as gen- erally understood is a colony or group of per- sons of education and refinement, who from a feeling of compassion for the poor people in the congested tenements of some great city voluntarily leave their own comfortable and often luxurious homes and sur- roundings and take up their abode and throw in their lot with the people whom they desire to help and whose condition they wish to ameliorate.
Speaking first of the cities and in a general way, the South is doing its fair share of social work along these lines, when we consider that the Southern cities are not, as a rule, of any great size com- pared with those in the North ; that they have been but little affected by the immense tide of foreign immigration which has crowded and congested the poorer quarters of the Northern cities ; and also that the lowest class in the Southern cities are prin- cipally negroes, which means that, owing to the race question, settlements of white persons among them would be out of the question. Still we find that in most large Southern cities either one or more social settlements are to be found, and that they are growing in number.
One thing to be specially noted is that the social
SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS. 615
settlement movement in the South is a distinctly religious movement. South of "Washington the set- tlements working in the cities, with few exceptions, have been organized and are carried on either by the churches themselves or by individuals, working in connection and cooperation with the religious bodies to which they belong.
In one notable case, a single individual possessed of large means has established a large plant in a poor section of one of our Southern cities, and along religious, educational, and social lines is seeking to ameliorate the conditions existing in the adjoining neighborhood. In other cases the different denomi- nations are opening settlement houses in the work- ing class sections of the cities, and seeking to awaken interest and secure financial help for their support from their churches. In yet one or two other cases we find individual congregations composed of well- to-do people opening up settlement work among those who are less fortunate than themselves.
This last example of the social settlement seems to promise the best results on the whole, so far as the cities are concerned, because if wisely and intel- ligently directed it should be instrumental in bring- ing the rich and poor closer together and enabling both to realize that the deepest and most precious experiences of life are not the exclusive possession of any one class, and that the mere expenditure of money does not necessarily secure joy and happiness or render one exempt from sorrow and the cares of life.
If the churches in the South can direct this social settlement movement in such a way as to bring about a better understanding between the rich and poor by establishing closer and more sympathetic relations between the classes, they will not only renew their
616 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
own spiritual power and vitality but help to solve one of the gravest problems confronting the American people.
Settlements in the Mountains.
But the most interesting and distinctive type of social settlement work in the South, and that which forms its principal contribution to the movement, is to be found in the mountains of the Appalachian range, extending through the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, North and South Caro- lina, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. The set- tlement work in these mountain regions is rapidly assuming large proportions, and as the conditions are entirely and strikingly different, so, also, are the methods employed necessarily of an entirely differ- ent character from those employed in the settle- ment work of the large cities. And whereas in the congested quarters of the large city, the settlement workers can hardly hope to do more than alleviate the diseased social conditions which exist, in the mountains the settlement may well be the means of gradually creating conditions which will make it possible for communities of the highest type to develop. Nature has provided some of her choicest and most valuable gifts for the benefit of those who dwell in these mountain regions — high elevation and invigorating air, pure water, and beautiful scenery. Here, then, we have an ideal environment, and one which multitudes of people having comfort- able and luxurious homes elsewhere gladly betake themselves to for health and recreation. If the soil is not rich it is at any rate capable of improvement and with the introduction of new and better methods of agriculture it will soon yield better returns
SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS. 617
for labor and a more generous support to the inhabitants.
Even under present conditions the population is rapidly increasing, and the pioneer life and hard struggle for existence have trained the people to endurance, fortitude and self-reliance. On the other hand, isolation and lack of schools and other means of civilization have resulted necessarily in ignorance, illiteracy, superstition and vague and confused notions of religion and morality. Laws, human and divine, are imperfectly understood, and therefore but little regarded.
It must be remembered, however, that the above description refers to the more neglected and remote sections of the mountains, where civilization has not yet found its way. The social settlement can do a work here which can not be done thoroughly and successfully in any other way, for it can and does provide the means by which the hindrances and obstacles to progress and social betterment can be removed.
How to remedy the evils which exist, and help the people to make a better use of the advantages and opportunities afforded by their environment without weakening their feeling of independence and self-respect is the problem which has to be solved, and which, through the self-denying efforts of a large and rapidly increasing body of workers, is in process of being solved. To make this more easily appreciated and understood a description of a par- ticular settlement in the mountains will be given, it being, of course, understood that it is used merely as an example and illustration of what is being done in many places elsewhere, though methods may differ to some extent to meet the varying needs and conditions of different localities.
618 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
The settlement which I have in mind is situated in Virginia in the heart of the Blue Ridge. The local- ity in times gone by was notorious on account of the lawlessness of the people and the prevalence of crime, which in the majority of cases went unpun- ished. The settlement consists of a home for the workers, surrounded by a group of buildings nec- essary for the proper carrying on of the work. These other buildings consist of the church, where the Sunday-school and religious services are held ; a two- room school house; a clothing bureau, where cast- off clothing sent by friends at a distance is sold at low prices to the people; a small hospital and dispensary; a post-office, and a bell tower, besides stables, outbuildings, etc.
The bell tower serves the useful purpose of telling the people the right time day by day, so that the children may be sent to school in proper time. The staff of workers consists of the minister in charge and his assistant; two deaconesses, who visit the people in their homes, train the girls in sewing classes, nurse the sick, teach in the Sunday-school, and in many other ways bring their personal influ- ence to bear upon the community. Besides these, there are the matron and one resident teacher. Within a radius of three or four miles, four other schools are carried on which, however, are closely related to the Mission Centre, teachers making it their headquarters and "Best House," and all supplies for the schools being stored there.
The influence for good exerted by this colony of workers who have gone forth from homes of refine- ment to cast in their lot with the poor, illiterate mountaineers it would be hard to overestimate. New ideas are being instilled and new aspirations awakened in the minds of the rising generation, both
SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS. 619
by the teaching and example of these devoted work- ers, whom the people have learned to love and revere.
A new development is now taking place in the shape of a model farm for the instruction of the people, and especially the boys, in improved methods of agriculture. In connection with this farm, an industrial school will be carried on, for the purpose of training both boys and girls in better ways of living, and of turning to the best account the oppor- tunities and advantages which the neighborhood affords.
The above description is used simply as an illus- tration, and it must not be supposed that settlement work in the mountains always follow the same lines. The needs and conditions are by no means always the same, and consequently the methods employed vary a good deal in different localities. In some places, ordinary school work is the principal method employed, because the lack of education seems to the Avorkers to be the principal hindrance to progress. But the conviction is growing that the best results can be obtained by educating along industrial lines, and industrial schools with farms attached are increasing in numbers. Hospitals and dispensaries are also in many cases being added as necessary and valuable aids in meeting the needs of isolated communities.
There has also taken place in connection with many social settlements a revival of fireside indus- tries, such as weaving and basket-making, which had nearly died out, and the articles made are sent out from the settlements into the outside world to be disposed of for the benefit of the mountain people, who are thus able to supplement the meagre returns received from labor in the fields. Another special method employed in some sections is that adopted by
620 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
another type of settlement workers, called Bible Readers. They live among the people in small but otherwise model homes, spending their time in visit- ing, reading the Bible, holding mothers' meetings and other religious services; thus bringing their personal influence to bear upon the lives of the people.
From these instances it will be seen that a num- ber of different methods are being employed, and that in some cases the principal attention is paid to some one distinct line of usefulness, while in other cases the aim is wider and more general.
Settlement work in the mountains is still in the experimental stage, and it is hoped that in time, as a result of a comparison of different methods and their results, a great deal of valuable information will be obtained, which will be of great use in the organization of new settlements.
Again, in the number of workers constituting a settlement in the mountains and in the plant or equipment, a considerable contrast will be found, as compared with the large social settlements of the cities. Owing to the fact that the mountain dis- tricts are, as a rule, very sparsely populated, it is often necessary and expedient to establish settle- ments of only two or three workers, living in a small house or log cabin, while in other localities, where the population is more thickly settled, larger col- onies are necessary, and more departments of work can be carried on. But neither a large staff of work- ers nor an expensive plant are necessary for the car- rying out of the settlement idea.
Some of the most successful enterprises of this kind in the South have had very small beginnings, and have owed their origin to the sympathy and devotion of a single individual, as in the case of a
SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS. 621
well-known settlement in Kentucky which had its beginning in the visit of a lady to a mountain section to see what it was like, with the result that she has given her life to the work of uplifting the com- munity. Neither the number of workers nor the amount of money available, nor the size and elab- orate character of the plant forms the most impor- tant factor in social settlement work in the moun- tains or elsewhere, but the spirit in which the work is done, and the personality of the workers.
The Southern mountaineers are a remarkable people, of fine physique, brave, independent, of more than average intelligence, with, in many cases, a considerable amount of originality; they need but the ordinary advantages and opportunities of edu- cation and moral training to render them valuable citizens of the republic.
On two separate occasions in the nation's history, viz., at the time of the Eevolution, and during the War of Secession, these mountaineers of the South helped to turn the tide of victory, and in the former case were an important factor in determining the result of the struggle.* And with proper education and training they will undoubtedly in the future add greatly to the strength and stability of the nation, both on account of their natural force of character, and also from the fact that they are more rapidly increasing in numbers than perhaps any other sec- tion of the population.
It does not take a prophet's inspired vision to foresee the time when large numbers of them will be fitted and qualified to take their place in every department of the national life, and when that time arrives, the nation will owe a debt of gratitude to those men and women who in the social settlements
* See Chapter III of Dr. Samuel T. Wilson's book, The Southern Mountaineers,
622 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
among the mountains are now training and equij* ping a strong and capable people to take their proper and legitimate place in the life of the nation, and in the work of promoting its greatness and
welfare.
r REDBRICK W. NEVE,
Archdeacon of the Blue 'Ridge Diocese of Virginia.
CHAPTER VI. WOMAN'S WORK IN THE SOUTH.
HE South, as no other section of this coun- try, has been and still is the most pro- nounced inheritor of Anglo-Saxon charac- teristics, customs and traditions. Climate does not change the nature of the English, Irish, German and Scotch woman in India, in Japan or in China ; she is always true to her inheritance of leadership and direction, and her descendants did not lose this inheritance in the Southern states where their responsibilities were great, and where an alien race looked up to them for instruction and direction. In the early days of the colonies the Southern woman kept pace with her European sisters in the social world, but had the added responsibilities of adjusting old world ways to a primitive, new en- vironment. While the men were occupied with the affairs of state the women had a great responsibility in preparing themselves and their sons to meet the coming change in government, and bravely and capably did they discharge this trust. Home senti- ment makes heroes and patriotic mothers rear suc- cessful leaders!
WOMAN'S WORK IX THE SOUTH. 623
Mrs. Ellett's Women of the Revolution gives definite facts in regard to many women of the Revo- lutionary period, and of the 124 women mentioned fifty-six are patriots from the Southern states — South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia and Kentucky.
Southern Women in the Social and Economic Life.
The women of the South have contributed largely to the social and economic up-building of the Nation. The plantation system in the South, taking the place of the town system in New England, put greater responsibility on the women of this section, and while as housekeepers and home-makers they per- formed all the duties of the other sections, they had the added care of an inferior and dependent race. To the patient teachings and personal training of the Southern woman are due the civilization and Christianizing of the negro in America. It was through her efforts that African savages were trained into Christian house servants.
While the Southern woman of those early days was educated by private tutors at home, her reading- was always directed, and many queens of the draw- ing room were competent executive business man- agers, as shown in cases where women, left widows with large families and several plantations to care for, proved successful financiers.
Southern matrons looked after the spinning, weav- ing and making of clothes, not only for the members of their family, but for the entire plantation, in- cluding in many cases hundreds of slaves. In those days when the activities of women were restricted to the home, plantation life offered many opportunities for self expression, and the nation is indebted to a Southern woman for the introduction of indigo into South Carolina in 1741.
624 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
It is difficult to state the definite work accom- plished by Southern women during this period, as it is an aggregation of individual work, or of planta- tion life or at best the accomplishments of various families, as the only records bearing on woman's work of these early days are to be found in diaries and personal reminiscences. It was a Southern woman, Anna Pamela Cunningham of South Caro- lina, who in 1853 organized the "Mount Vernon Ladies' Association" for the purchase and care of Washington's home and tomb, at Mount Vernon. This association, in 1906, spent $35,000, and records over 100,000 visitors to this home, which is main- tained by the women of America.
However, as women's activities began to reach outside of the home, and as machinery came in to relieve the duties at home, we notice Southern women turning to "organization" for self expres- sion, and through these various organizations some idea of the work of Southern women can be secured. In the decade preceding the War between the States, Southern women's organizations developed slowly because of the mighty political struggles rending the country — the nation was in the throes of a great change and the Southern woman's responsibility was directed mostly as a compliment to her hus- band's and sons' endeavors. Fortunes had grown, and material prosperity had increased the responsi- bilities of the Southern woman — woman's first call was still in the home. As the war clouds burst these women found their special work.
Hospital and Charity Work.
Hospital work and district nursing work appeal to all women, and stern and heartbreaking was the training in this line that came to the women of the South in the War between the States. In the records
WOMAN'S WORK IX THE SOUTH. 625
of the South Carolina Hospital Aid Association in Virginia 1861-62 are recorded eight hospitals where the very best of South Carolina womanhood labored and died in the devoted nursing and care of the sick and wounded. This is merely an example of what the women of all the Southern states were doing at this time. These hospitals were aided and supported by the Ladies' Aid Societies at home, and in South Carolina alone there are recorded the history of 110 of these societies (consult South Carolina Women in the Confederacy, Vol. I, pp. 21-25), and the material aid they gave in medicines, clothing, nourishment, etc., was the main support of these hospitals. The work also done by women in the Wayside Hospitals deserves consideration in any record of woman's work during this period of the South 's history. The first of these was organized by the women of Columbia, S. C., ''The Soldiers' Rest" — to meet the needs of wounded soldiers in transit, on trains all over the South. The work grew in tremendous proportions. A railroad junction would soon have its own Wayside Hospital, and the local women would take turns as nurses and pro- viders of nourishment, bandages, medicines, etc., for the weak and weary travelers.
Dr. John T. Darby, surgeon C. S. A., and in 1866 volunteer surgeon to the Bed Cross Corps in the Austro-Russian War, in an address before the South Carolina Medical Association, 1873, says: "And here be it said with justice and pride that the credit of originating this system is due to the women of South Carolina. In a small room in the capital of this state the first wayside home was founded, and during the war some seventy-five thousand soldiers were relieved by having their wounds dressed, their ailments attended and very frequently being clothed
Vat *>W-40
626 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
through the patriotic services and good offices of a few untiring ladies of Columbia. From this little nucleus spread that grand system of wayside hos- pitals which was established during our own and the late European wars."*
But war does not alone create a need for hos- pitals. In this same Columbia, in 'May, 1893, a group of twelve women opened the Columbia Hospital and managed it until 1908. During this period there were 5,000 patients treated. In 1908, sixty beds were in use and twenty-six nurses employed, the running expenses amounting to $27,000, the money being raised by patients' fees and volunteer contri- butions. In 1908 these women turned their plant, valued at $75,000, over to a committee of doctors with the only restriction that there should be three free beds reserved in perpetuity. In New Orleans, La., June, 1905, a board of fifteen women organized, and manages the New Orleans Hospital and Dis- pensary for Women and Children. This Dispensary treated 4,550 cases in 1908, and the total expense for this year for both the dispensary and district nurs- ing work was $9,000. The funds are secured through volunteer contributing and subscribing members, the state of Louisiana, July, 1908, giving $2,000 a year for next two years, while the city of New Or- leans gives $600 for 1909. This organization main- tains four district nurses, who in 1908 paid 1,440 visits. The visiting nurse work was inaugurated in Richmond, Va., in 1900 by a party of nurses, and an association of women was organized to support it. The funds are raised by these women from collec- tions in the churches, and five nurses are employed. In 1908, 1,248 cases were attended with 11,947 visits ; the expenses were $1,700, and a "Tag Day" realized
* South Carolina Women in the Confederacy, Vol. I, pp. 84-86.
WOMAN'S WORK IX THE SOUTH. 627
$3,000 for an emergency fund. The city department of health gives the salary of two of the nurses for the sake of having the entire staff help with the tuberculosis work, while one benevolent woman pays for a third nurse of the five employed; these sums do not appear in the expense account of the asso- ciation.
In Charleston, S. C., the Ladies' Benevolent Society was organized in 1813 and chartered in 1814, ' ' to visit the sick poor in their homes " ; in 1861 their income was $3,000. After the war the funds dwin- dled but the faithful women kept on their work of love. In 1903, this venerable society, on its ninetieth anniversary, launched its visiting trained nurse and opened its loan closet at the Associated Charities. In 1908, this society expended $1,200; 1,980 visits were paid to 173 charity patients, while thirty physi- cians employed the services of the nurse. The society numbers 168 members, and is supported by voluntary contributions and a small income from trust funds which have survived the stormy days of the sixties and reconstruction times. The District Nursing Association and Auxiliary of Birmingham, Ala., organized in 1906, supports one white and one colored nurse ; in 1908 the membership was 150 and it expended $2,000. Visiting nurse work in Wil- mington, N. C., was inaugurated by the Ministering Circle of King's Daughters in 1904; their nurse made 2,933 visits in 1908 to 350 patients, and expended $700. In Savannah, Ga., the visiting nurse work was begun by the Mary MacLean Circle of King's Daughters in 1904. In 1908 this circle of twenty-five women expended $1,000, of which $300 was contributed by the city, and their nurse made 1,700 visits. Visiting nurse work began in Louis- ville, Ky., in 1890, and is managed by twenty-eight
628 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
circles of King's Daughters (700 members). They employed three nurses, who in 1908 made 6,245 visits, the expenses, including the nurses' salaries, being $3,292.
Homes for aged men and women have also de- pended on women for support. In Richmond, Va., The Home for Incurables was founded in 1894 by Miss Mary Greenhow, herself an incurable, and to-day a band of women own and manage their building, housing thirty-six inmates. In Raleigh, N. C., St. Luke's Home for Aged Women was organ- ized by women in 1894, and has cared for fifty-eight old women, paying, in 1900, $2,200 for their present home. The Home for Needy Confederate Women in Richmond, Va., was opened in 1900. This home re- ceived $6,000 from the legislature, while the city of Richmond appropriates $300 a year and gave a lot for its use. Its property is now worth $19,000 and it has cared for thirty infirm old ladies. Lee Camp Auxiliary in Richmond, Va., a score of women or- ganized in 1885 to attend to the charity work of this Camp of Confederate Veterans, after twenty-four years of service have distributed $30,000 in charity, without an expense attached to their work. Again the Confederate Home and College in Charleston, S. C., organized in 1867 by a small band of women and managed up to the present by a board of fifteen women, has cared for many needy old Confederate women, and has helped in educating 1,500 deserving girls of Confederate lineage. This institution has at present sixteen old ladies and eighty-five board- ing pupils in its care, and its material property is valued at $75,000. Since 1905 the state legislature has contributed $2,000 annually towards its main- tenance ; the expenses last year amounted to $12,000.
WOMAN'S WOEK IN THE SOUTH. 639
Memorial and Educational Work.
At the close of the war every household in the South had some new-made soldier's grave to cher- ish, and mourning was the garb of the Southern woman. As of old on that first Easter Eve women would remember their dead, so the Nineteenth cen- tury Southern woman fulfilled this womanly office. and in the spring of 1866 Confederate memorial associations sprang up as if by magic all over the South, the earliest on record being in Columbus and Americus, Ga., on April 26, 1866, and in Charleston, S. C., May 14, 1866. In Louisville, Ky., May 31, 1900, all these associations were united, and to-day this general organization records seventy active as- sociations. These asociations for the past forty years have been caring for the Confederate soldiers' graves all over the South (bringing their bodies from distant battlefields and uncared-for lands, and returning them to the sod of their native states), and erecting headstones and monuments to their memories. They all observe a special day in the spring called Memorial Day, when with suitable addresses and martial music they deck the Confed- erate soldiers' graves with flowers and evergreens, for "love makes memory eternal."
The United Daughters of the Confederacy repre- sent one of the most powerful factors in woman's work in the South since the war, its object being "memorial, historical, benevolent, educational and social — to honor the memory of those who served and those who fell in the service of the Confederate States, to record the part taken by the Southern women during the struggle and during the period of reconstruction, and to collect and preserve the ma- terial for a true history of the War between the
630 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
States. ' ' There are 860 chapters, scattered in thirty States and the City of Mexico, representing a mem- bership of 49,000 women ; and in twenty States these chapters are organized into State Divisions — Ohio, Montana, and Washington being among these states. This organization recognizes the services of the Con- federate Veterans by the presentation of a bronze decoration known all over the South, as the South- ern Cross of Honor. Since 1900, 57,000 of these crosses have been bestowed by this Order, and after 1910 the presentation will be discontinued.
The educational work is carried on by the various state divisions through numerous scholarships and prizes for essays offered to the descendants of Con- federate veterans. The cooperative work at present is the building of the Shiloh Monument at Shiloh battlefield, Tennessee, for $50,000 with $5,000 in hand, and the Arlington Monument, Confederate Plat, Arlington National Cemetery, for $30,000, with $9,000 in hand. The definite material work accom- plished by the United Daughters of the Confederacy since their organization in 1894 has been : The monu- ment to Jefferson Davis in Richmond, Va., unveiled June 3, 1907, erected at a cost of $72,000— $20,600 of which had been collected by the Confederate Vet- erans after the death of Mr. Davis. This sum was turned over unconditionally to the U. D. C. in 1900, and through their untiring efforts the remaining $52,000 was raised in seven years, while the entire plans and all arrangements for building the monu- ment were arranged for by these women, as also the monument to Winnie Davis at Hollywood, Rich- mond, Va., November, 1899, and the window to Mrs. Davis at Biloxi, Miss., February 28, 1908. Besides this cooperative work, individual chapters and vari- ous state divisions have been active in caring for
WOMAN'S WORK IX THE SOUTH. 631
needy Confederate Veterans and in raising local monuments to the Confederate cause, which stand out as silent sentinels and object lessons to the chil- dren of future generations. But believing that the South needs no other vindication than the truth of history, the most active intellects, the most carefully trained minds, and the most willing hands in the order are being devoted to this part of its work. The South Carolina Division alone has collected and published two volumes, 400 pages each, South Caro- lina Women in the Confederacy, personal experi- ences and reminiscences of the women of 1861-65.
The Confederate Literary Memorial Society with headquarters in Eichmond, Va. (325 women), re- ceived from the city of Richmond, in 1890, the old white house of the Confederacy, the home of Presi- dent Jefferson Davis, to convert into a Confederate Museum. On February 22, 1896, they opened the empty building, repaired and made fire-proof, an- nouncing their purpose to collect Confederate rec- ords and relics, and assigned a room in the Museum to each Southern state. All rooms are now filled with valuable relics, and the library of the Society has eighty-five volumes with 13,376 certified names and records of Confederate soldiers and sailors in Mss., together with many of Mr. Davis 's private papers, and the Southern Historical Society of Rich- mond has given its collection of 10,000 papers, which will be published in the future. The Society has issued a calendar of Confederate papers, consisting of 600 printed pages, compiled from the 5,000 Mss. owned and deposited in the Museum, and the work goes on in collecting and cataloging these papers. The records show that in 1907 the receipts were $6,000, and expenditures $4,000, there were 20,000 paid admissions to the Museum, $1,000 paid in sala-
632 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
ries and $2,000 added to its endowment fund. The endowment fund is now over $7,000, and the Museum is free from all debt. The Daughters of the Confed- eracy from every state assist in this work.
Work of Southern Club Women.
As the women began to recover from the priva- tions and hardships of reconstruction days they be came ready for the federation idea expressed in tho General Federation of Women's Clubs, organized 1890. Of the 350,000 organized club women in America, 45,000 are in the Southern states, and of the six presidents of this national organization Georgia has furnished one. The Southern club women are most vitally interested in education, library extension, civics and literature. This section leads in their number of free scholarships, in their efforts in behalf of industrial education and in the work for rural schools, and Southern club women are supporting free kindergartens in many com- munities. This article cannot go into the details of the definite work accomplished by club women in education, as a special article in this volume will be devoted to the Southern woman in education, and will include this field of work. The club women of Alabama, North Carolina and South Carolina are responsible for the establishment of their state in- dustrial schools for Wayward Boys, or State Re- formatories, as it was through the efforts of these federations that these state institutions were estab- lished by legislative acts. The Texas and North Carolina federations in 1908 secured a state travel- ing library commission, while South Carolina, Flor- ida and Mississippi are at present actively working for the establishment of such a commission by their state legislatures. The Texas federation has col- lected thirty-seven cases of books, North Carolina
WOMAN'S WOBK IN THE SOUTH. 633
sixty-three, Kentucky 90, Tennessee 100, and South Carolina 100, each case or library containing from fifty to 100 books, making at least 25,000 books col- lected and kept in circulation by these five state federations.
Club women are largely responsible for the numer- ous public and circulating libraries growing up so rapidly in various communities in the South, and in many cases a public library is the direct result of a Woman's club, many clubs supporting and maintain- ing these libraries. Southern club women lead all sections in their efforts for civic improvement, Texas alone claiming 200 civic leagues. The plantation system in the South, necessitating the ownership of large tracts of land, developed a permanency of residence which created an intense local pride and a feeling of personal responsibility — necessary equip- ments for the civic leader. Another element which accounts for the civic activities among Southern club women is the absence of foreign emigration which has spread over the rest of the United States leaving the South its peculiar local coloring. The movement in behalf of Civil Service Reform in the General Federation of Women's Clubs was insti- tuted by a South Carolina woman, Miss Perkins, now resident in Massachusetts. Although the club women of Baltimore, Richmond, Norfolk, Jackson- ville, Louisville and Memphis enjoy the privilege of club houses, there are comparatively few other women 's club houses in the South, owing to the fact that Southern people are of a hospitable and social disposition and most of their social activities centre around their homes. The club women of the South are wielding a powerful influence in moulding public opinion, in fostering a taste for literature and in de- veloping a civic ideal for their section.
634 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
The need of women to find an opportunity to help themselves brought about "The Woman's Ex- change," an organization which has prospered all over the South. The first Woman's Exchange in the South — the Christian Woman's Exchange of New Orleans, La. — was chartered May 27, 1881, by f thirty women. In 1908 there were 190 benefited by this Exchange, and $11,365 paid to women for work. The business represented by this Exchange was $21,384 in one year The Bichmond, Va., Woman's Exchange, organized 1883, is managed by a board of thirty-three women. In 1908 it had 238 consigners, and paid out $15,861 to consigners. The Woman's Exchange, Charleston, S. C., organized 1885, is man- aged by a board of fifty women ; in 1908 it had 156 consigners and paid out $10,714. In Louisville, Ky., a Woman's Exchange managed by business women was organized in 1891 ; it has 418 members, forty-six consigners and paid out $2,600 in 1908. In Birming- ham, Ala., a Woman's Exchange, organized 1898, is managed by a board of twelve ladies; in 1908 had 112 consigners and paid out $8,745. The Savannah, Ga., Woman's Exchange, organized by a woman in 1899, is managed by a board of thirty-two women, has 126 consigners and paid out $8,817 to these con- signers in 1908. The Jackson, Miss., Woman's Ex- change, organized 1905 by a circle of King's Daugh- ters, is now a chartered institution managed by a board of nine women. In 1908 it had 120 consigners. A Woman's Exchange was opened in Wilmington, N. C., in 1907 by two women who run the business as a private enterprise, while in Atlanta, Ga., the Young Women's Christian Association opened a Woman's Exchange the same year, 1907, with 371 consigners for their first year and their sales amounted to
WOMAN'S WOEK IX THE SOUTH. 635
$2,800. These Exchanges are of tremendous mate- rial value to their communities.
Southern women are active in the Daughters of the American Revolution, organized 1890, and in the Colonial Dames of America, 1892, national, patri- otic, hereditary societies, showing to the world the part the South played during these periods. The president of the Colonial Dames at present is a Virginia woman.
AYhile Southern women have not responded to the call of the Equal Suffrage Association and their cause does not flourish in the South, this organiza- tion has a New Orleans, La., woman for one of its general officers.
Y. W. 0. A. and Other Association Work.
The South is actively interested in the National movement of the Young Women's Christian Asso- ciation, the oldest association in this section having been organized in Richmond, Va., over twenty-five years ago as a boarding house for girls, and this Richmond Association, in 1908, added 930 new mem- bers. There are twenty city associations in the Southern states, besides five mill village and numer- ous student associations in the colleges. The finan- cial value of the work in the South varies from $1,600 for Tennessee and Kentucky, to $5,500 for Virginia, North and South Carolina. Some cities employ several salaried officers; Richmond, Knox- ville and Montgomery own their own buildings, while Charlotte, N. C., has a lot paid for and $30,000 pledged towards a building fund which they hope to make $50,000 before January, 1910.
Mention should be made of the settlement work in the South as carried on by the "Neighborhood House," Louisville, Ky., and "Kingsley House,"
636 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
New Orleans, La. The night school work was begun in New Orleans by Miss Sophie Wright, in Rich- mond, Va., by Miss Arents, and is being carried on in Charleston, S. C., by a band of women.
This article cannot even touch upon the tremen- dous unselfish work Southern women are doing under the direction of evangelical churches and mis- sionary societies, as this work would be included in the history of the churches.
Tte Southern Woman in Literature.
The first American woman to publish a newspaper was a Southern woman, Mrs. Elizabeth Timothy, who published the South Carolina Gazette in Charleston, S. C., in 1744. The second oldest Amer- ican publication for children, The Rosebud, or Youth's Gazette, a weekly newspaper for juveniles, \vas published in Charleston, S. C., by Mrs. Caroline Gilman in 1832. The Keystone (established 1899 by two South Carolina women), a monthly journal de- voted to Southern women's work, published in Charleston, S. C., is the oldest club woman's pub- lication in the United States and is owned and edited by Misses Mary and Louisa Poppenheim. The North Carolina Booklet (1900), a quarterly magazine, devoted to the history of North Carolina, is published in Ealeigh, N. C., by the North Carolina Daughters of the Revolution, Mrs. E. E. Moffitt and Miss Mary Hinton, editors.
In no field of work have Southern women been more active than in that of modern literature, indeed they lead all sections, and such names as Mary Johnston, Ellen Glasgow, Frances Hodgson Burnet, Charles Egbert Craddock, Ruth McEnery Stuart, Augusta Wilson Evans, Christian Reid, Amelie Rives Chanler, Grace King, Julia Magruder, Anna
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE SOUTH. 637
Maria Barnes, Virginia Fraser Boyle, and Martha Young are household words, and the best literary critics have pronounced Olive Tilford Dargan, Almond, N. C., as the American poet of today.
Conclusion.
Southern womanhood rocked the cradle of Wash- ington, Jefferson, Calhoun, Davis and Lee. It sent its sons to the Revolution, to the War of 1812, to the Mexican War and to the Confederate army. It managed plantations, nursed the sick and buried the dead. When the dark days of reconstruction came, its cheerful, changeless, patient endeavor to accept the changed conditions of life, nerved the manhood of the South to that fierce struggle, that stubborn, irresistible persistence, which with strength of brain, and strength of heart and hands, lifted the South from desolation and ruin to the present era of prosperity. And now once more returning to the heritage of their fore-mothers these women are showing the sublime and permanent basis of their virtue by their deeds. They are teaching their chil- dren high ideals of American patriotism, are caring for the afflicted and distressed in their midst, are beautifying the waste places of their native states, and as they look out into the misty morning of the future they receive fresh courage from the prestige of the past, for they believe that inspiration for the future can be secured through the contemplation of that past. Such women are an element in a social structure upon which much can be imposed !
LOUISA B. POPPENHEIM,
Charleston, S. C.
638 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH,
CHAPTER VII.
WOMAN'S PAET IN THE EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS OF THE SOUTH.
COMPLETE presentation of this subject is precluded by the limits imposed upon the length of this article. The wide geographic area covered by the Southern states and the varied forms in which woman's educational work has there expressed itself, render necessary a very general treatment of the topic.
The title suggests that the present educational progress involves an evolution or departure from previous conditions. This we take to be a fact, and is in reality a movement for the democratization of education. It is woman's part in the genesis and promotion of these conditions, which is the point proposed for emphasis.
The educational revival, now well under way in the Southern states, despite many peculiar embar- rassments will be wrought out under certain highly favorable conditions. The people, though dispersed over a vast territory, are homogenous, a homo- genity among the ruling race, not only of blood, but the result of forces operating both from within and without to intensify this unity.
The Southern Woman's Fitness for Educational Work.
The Southern woman comes to her task with capa- cities, trained under former conditions, which equip her for her work. She is the daughter of the past, and her personality involves no such break, between ante and post bellum periods, as is popularly sup-
WOMEX IX EDUCATIOX. 639
posed. From mistress of a plantation, where the lady of the household, strong in her position of social leadership, carried on her heart and mind the welfare often of a hundred souls, it is an easy tran- sition to a position where the creation of public opinion becomes a conscious purpose, and the sense of responsibility, born under household conditions, broadens out to include the welfare of the com- munity. Her present fitness has thus been fostered ; first, by her experience as mistress on the plantation, and secondly, by the necessities of a new social order, requiring readjustment to novel and untoward con- ditions. The fruit of this schooling is large patience and sense of responsibility, a capacity for adminis- tration linked with an eye for detail, a power of initiative, and sound common sense, the result of contact with the homely things of every-day life. Thus equipped, it was but natural the Southern woman should enter with consecration upon this new educational propaganda.
Her influence has been exerted along two lines; first, as she has stimulated public sentiment and educational activities in the organized systems of public instruction, and in chartered institutions of learning, though without official or recognized con- nection; and secondly, in the various organizations which have originated under her special leadership and control. As regards the latter class, her zeal and intelligence have expressed themselves along most varied lines.
The lack of facility for advanced mental training, and the conservative opinion in the South with ref- erence to women 's being in the public eye, have oper- ated to retard the development among them of the more scientific study of social problems, characteris- tic of our present age, and to cause such social work
640 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
as they have undertaken to appear, as a ruley in their less advanced and less highly developed forms. It is interesting, however, to note, in spite of educa- tional disadvantages and the later entry of Southern women into work of a more public nature, that we find among them a beginning, at least, of almost every form of work under way in other sections.
Various Spheres of Work.
The collecting of historical material and the pres- ervation and marking of places associated with the early history of our country has been widely under- taken by women, as witnessed by the vitality of such societies as the Colonial Dames, Daughters of the Revolution and the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities.
The Daughters of the Confederacy, together with the various memorial associations which cover the South, have erected numbers of monuments and piously kept alive the memories of our war period, thus handing on to the present and future genera- tions the knowledge of the spirit of high adventure and devotion to duty which characterized their forefathers.
The Federation of Women's Clubs is well organ- ized in most of the states of the South and is doing valuable work for forestry, fostering of library boards and extension of library facilities, creating public sentiment favorable to compulsory education and in restraint of child labor, developing legisla- tion for the better protection of women and children, and supporting and caring for numerous industrial schools for the children of the mountainous and rural neighborhoods. A system of school exhibits with prizes, held in connection with the county fairs, has been undertaken by club women in three of the
WOMEN IN EDUCATION. 641
counties in Virginia. The exhibits are largely of an industrial and agricultural character, thus stimu- lating the introduction and promotion of these sub- jects in the rural schools, and drawing together annu- ally at each county seat large numbers of people with school interests as their special concern. The directions for the preparation of these exhibits, such as the raising of corn and peas, the making of bread, good butter, or of some well-sewed garment, are minutely prepared, and furnish, when intelligently pursued, a form of systematic instruction of them- selves. The contest also includes original composi- tions on subjects relating to country homes or improvement of country schools, and in this fashion the young people's attention and imagination are focused on the problems at home. The Keystone, the oldest club woman's publication in the United States, is published at Charleston, S. C., by Miss Louisa B. Poppenheim.
In the cities the movement for playgrounds, juve- nile courts, reformatories, kindergartens, manual and industrial training, the better organization of charitable effort, and the development of civic health and beauty has been largely the charge of women.
The Southern Association of College Women was organized in 1903, at the University of Tennessee, to promote a better standard of education among the schools and colleges for young women in the South. It aims to encourage a desire for higher education among these women and to furnish them the collated information which shall make them intelligent as to the academic standing — requirements and degrees of the various institutions of learning open to them in the country. The various branches of this asso- ciation are helping to work out the educational prob- lems in their several states and have undertaken a
Vol. 10 — 11
642 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
careful study of facts and conditions which must form the basis for constructive work. This latter service is especially characteristic of the work of the Georgia branch.
A work for farmers' wives has been undertaken in Georgia and Texas and is being done with some success in North Carolina in connection with the Fanners' Institute Trains.
Some notable contributions to social and educa- tional progress are found at various points in the South. Miss Julia Tutwiler's work for convicts in Alabama, and Mrs. E. D. Johnston's development of the State Eeformatory at Birmingham, are worthy of note. Miss Martha Berry's industrial school for boys at Eome, Ga., was undertaken and brought to its present large proportions by her individual efforts. Mrs. Annie C. Peyton of Port Gibson, Miss., furnished the generic idea which created the Mis- sissippi Industrial School and College for white girls, the first institution of its kind in the United States. Miss Pettit's School and Settlement for mountain people at Hindman, Ky., begun in a small way by the Federation of Women's Clubs, and since supported by the Women's Christian Temperance Union, is a type for neighborhood work in sections remote from railroads and outside influence. The North Carolina Booklet is published quarterly by the North Carolina Daughters of the Eevolution in the interest of the preservation of the history of that state ; and the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, under the leadership of Mrs. Cynthia B. T. Coleman and Mrs. Joseph Bryan, has done very much to preserve and beautify the many spots in Virginia indissolubly linked with the founding of the American nation.
As yet, women in the South have played but a
WOMEN IN EDUCATION. 643
small part as members of state boards of either charitable or educational purport. A woman is the head of the State Board of Charities in North Caro- lina, two women in Texas hold positions as regents in the State Industrial School, one woman in Ken- tucky is a member of the State Educational Com- mission, and in Mississippi the position of State Librarian has long been held by a woman. This small number arises very largely from the prejudice in the South against women assuming positions of public notice, and the change of sentiment, which is evidenced by their presence in important posi- tions and on boards of independent organizations, has not yet voiced itself in legislation permitting their appointment to similar positions under state control.
The work of the Southern woman for the col- ored people has generally been of an individual nature. She has been trained to a sense of respon- sibility and service to them from her childhood, but her ministry has been to the particular man or woman coming under her notice, rather than any well thought out direction of them as a weaker and less developed people, calling for social study and wise guidance. There are signs abroad that this view 'of the situation is growing in importance, and that her womanly sympathy and understanding of the negroes — the precipitate of a patient guidance of the individual — may prove an effective social force in the uplift of this people.
School Improvement League Work.
The School Improvement League work is perhaps the most widespread and democratic, non-profes- sional movement in the interest of education, at work in the Southern states. It has been organized
611 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
and promoted almost entirely by women. It is aii attempt to interest the community in the com- munity's school, to fit the school to interpret the life of its own neighborhood to the young citizens and to prepare them for participation in it, and thus to make the schoolhouse the natural centre of social organization. To this end there is now a woman at work as field organizer in each of nine of the Southern states. She has the assistance often of a volunteer body of local county workers. Her work is conducted in close sympathy with and under the prestige of the state department of education. A majority of the numerous counties in each state has been reached, and a beginning made to improve existing conditions and to generate a local feeling of pride in and responsibility for the neighboring school. Prizes have been offered for the greatest relative improvement in school buildings, grounds and interiors. The local communities in their efforts to excel have multiplied these cash prizes many fold, and the money has been expended for im- provements ranging in variety from an American flag to an artesian well. Other considerable sums of money have been raised by country people for the upbuilding of their school conditions, and an interest awakened full of meaning for the future.
The enthusiasm and vitality which have character- ized this work seem born of the latent consciousness that it is an effort in the direction of a more real democracy. The vision of the inherent worth of every human soul and the value of each man as an end in himself has captivated the imagination of the far-sighted men and women in the South, and the School League Work is the woman's effort to hasten the realization of this vision.
The step from the home to the schoolhouse is a
FBATEBXAL ORGANIZATIONS. 645
short and natural one. The Southern woman, like her sisters from Maine to California, has followed the child in his progress thither. Her mind and affections are already busy in making the school an efficient partner of the home in the development of a broader life and a more purposeful citizenship among the children of her several states. With natu- ral endowments for this service, and a knowledge of its abundant meaning, the Southern woman is des- tined to play an increasingly large part in the rapidly advancing educational progress of the South.
MARY COOKE BRANCH MUNFORD,
President Richmond Education Association, Riclimond, Va.
CHAPTER VIII
FEATEENAL ORGANIZATIONS IN THE SOUTH.
Free Masonry.
I F all the fraternal orders now in the South only one, Free Masonry, dates back to colo- nial times. George Washington, whose birth nearly coincides with its introduction into America, was a Mason, and in his time, as now, in its ranks were found men prominent politically, pro- fessionally, in business circles, and in the army and navy.
When Virginia, in 1777, "being then so circum- stanced as to render it impossible to have recourse to the Grand Lodge beyond the sea," was consider- ing organizing a Grand Lodge of her own, a conven- tion, which was not large enough to act, recom-
646 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
mended the formation of a Grand Lodge. "And in order to give dispatch to this business this conven- tion beg leave to recommend to their constituents and to the members of all other Lodges in the state His Excellency General George Washington as a proper person to fill the office of Grand Master for the same, and to whom the charter of appointment aforementioned be made. But should the Lodge prefer any other person to fill this office, etc.'*— the resolution going on to give the mode of procedure. Washington was not appointed. It seems strange that a man with a revolution on his hands should have been considered "a proper person for the place," and doubtless it was on account of the war he declined it. Though never Grand Master, Wash- ington was, late in life, Master of that Lodge in Alex- andria, Va., that now styles itself Alexandria-Wash- ington No. 22. In some of his biographies there is no reference to the fact that he was a Mason, just as some of those of Benjamin Franklin, once Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, do not mention the interest he took in the order. This is due to the fact that there was such bitterness between the Masons and Anti-Masons after the famous Morgan mystery that the biographer did not choose that his hero's name should be dragged into the controversy.
Lafayette was made a Mason by Washington, and when that distinguished Frenchman came back to our shores many years after Washington's death, he visited some of the lodges ; one at least of which still preserves the records containing his autograph.
There is every reason to believe that all through Washington's stormy life, from the time he was ini- tiated as a young man up to his death, he was under the influence of the order, and thoroughly devoted
FUATEHSAL OKGANIZATIONS. 6471
to it. He was buried with Masonic honors and a medal was struck in commemoration of him.
In North Carolina the first Grand Master was the then governor of the state, and in Virginia in the early history of the Grand Lodge we find a similar instance of a man acting as chief executive and Most Worshipful Grand Master at the same time.
Some of the other Southern men that have been prominent, both in Free Masonry and otherwise, are John Blair, first Grand Master of Grand Lodge of Virginia, afterwards one of the judges of the Supreme Court of the United States ; John Marshall, chief justice of the United States, who was once Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Virginia; Henry Clay, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Kentucky; James K. Polk, once President of our country, who was Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Tennessee; General Winfield Scott, presidential candidate, and Andrew Jackson, actual President; Edmund Randolph, appointed by Washington first attorney-general of the United States, and many others.
Southern Masons claim not only these distin- guished names, but also the honor of building the first house in America that was dedicated solely to Masonic uses. Since it was erected in the last years of the Eighteenth century our country has developed morally as well as materially.
What lodge now, wanting a new home, would peti- tion the state legislature to allow it to run a lottery to raise money to build? But those Masons of the last decade of the Eighteenth century did ; and what is more, their request was granted so that, the land being given, the house went up. It still stands and serves its original purpose, though a far more pre- tentious temple helps to house the Richmond lodges.
648 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
For thirty-odd years after its introduction Free- masonry was the only order of its kind in our coun- try ; but as the time grew ripe for the Eevolutionary War, various political and patriotic organizations sprang up, many of which died out in course of time ; while others changed into almost new societies. With the first quarter of the Nineteenth century fraternal organizations began to come; slowly at first and then in ever-increasing numbers they came ; old ones dropping out from time to time, and new ones crowd- ing in; until to-day our country has more secret societies than any in the world.
Odd Fellows.
The Southern people are lovers of their kind, and these organizations with a social aspect appeal to them. Wherever the population is compact enough lodges flourish. Many of these fraternal orders issue life and accident insurance benefit certificates; this, in fact, is the raison-d-etre of some of them. Leav- ing out all with this feature, the largest orders in the South are : Independent Order of Odd Fellows, Free Masons, Knights of Pythias, Improved Order of Bed Men, Benevolent Order of Elks, Order of Eagles, and Junior Order of American Mechanics. The largest of them in the South, and, for that matter, the largest in the English-speaking world, is the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. This is an importation from England, and in that country is known as the Manchester Unity. Its introduction to America was the organization of a lodge in a Southern city, Baltimore, in the year 1819. This lodge had its charter from the Manchester Unity of Odd Fellows which, though its membership is nearly as large as that of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, was only one of the many orders of Odd Fellows existing in England at the beginning of the
FRATERNAL ORGANIZATIONS. 649
Nineteenth century — about seven in all there were, each independent.
Odd Fellowship has taken a firm hold on the people of the South, and having so large a member- ship they have found it easy to build and maintain homes for their orphans and for their aged and dependent. The order is in a flourishing condition and bids fair to continue at the head of the fraternal organizations of our country, in point of numbers, at least.
Bed Men.
The first American product in the way of a fra- ternal order is the "Improved Order of Bed Men" and this, like the order of Odd Fellows, originated in Baltimore. There had been a society in Philadel- phia calling itself Bed Men which seemed to be a survival of one of the patriotic societies of the American Bevolution; but the Improved Order of Bed Men, which began in Baltimore in 1833 or 1834, is really a new organization. It is primarily a civic society with benevolent and social characteristics. Since 1881 it has flourished greatly. One of its aims is to preserve the memory of the American Indian. One means to this end is their use of the Bed Men's English in designating places, things, persons, and times, as great sachem, wigwam, moons, sleeps, happy hunting ground, great spirit, etc.
Knights of Pythias.
The next order in point of time is "Knights of Pythias." This society, like the Odd Fellows and the Bed Men, originated in a Southern city, though we can hardly claim it as a Southern product. It was organized in Washington during the War of Secession by five government clerks, two of whom were Bed Men, with the intention of confining it to government employes. It is a brotherhood intended
650 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
to be intensely American and, at the same time, to disseminate the principles of friendship, charity and benevolence.
Elks.
The Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks, a convivial, charitable and benevolent order, was organized a little later in New York City by some members of the theatrical profession. Like the Knights of Pythias and the Bed Men this is a purely American order, and like them has enjoyed a great degree of prosperity. Though not a beneficial order it claims to expend more in unostentatious charity than any other organization in the world. Its mem- bership is open to all professions and in its ranks are many prominent men.
The first secret society to incorporate life insur- ance among its features was the Ancient Order of United Workmen, in 1868. Others now having it are : Eoyal Arcanum, Knights of Maccabees, Wood- men of the World, Modern Woodmen of America, Heptasophs and many others.
Characteristics and Benefits of Fraternal Organizations.
All of these, and especially the fraternal orders that do not issue life benefit certificates, the Masons, Odd Fellows, Pythians, etc., have certain character- istics in common. They all, for instance, enjoin secrecy under strong penalties. Once initiated into the sacred mysteries the greatest stress is laid upon the necessity and the importance of keeping the secrets of the society. This, of course, is primarily to guard against imposture. The aid an order will extend a member in distress is so generous that there must be some test of a man's claim to its benefits; but this aside, secrecy is of value to these orders in that it strengthens the sense of brotherhood that binds together the members of a lodge. The con-
FBATEK.NAL ORGANIZATIONS. 651
seiousness of a secret shared draws men together as common interests do, or common tastes. Again, they have regalia and paraphernalia — aprons, col- lars, robes, jewels, sashes, sandals, plumes — to be used particularly in conferring the work; and, also, lodge property, if we may so style it. The Masons, for instance, cannot hold a communication of any lodge without a Bible, square and compass.
The Odd Fellows have an all-seeing eye, the three links and other emblems, and they, also, as the Pyth- iaus and Elks and, possibly, others, must have the open Bible in the lodge room.
They also all have a ritual — some kind of "work." in which there is reference to some Biblical or his- torical person or event, as the Masons have Solomon and his Temple, the Odd Fellows the story of David and Jonathan and of the good Samaritan, the Pyth- ians the story of Damon and Pythias. In the Mac- cabees, the Red Men, the Elks, the Order of Eagles, the Druids, etc., the reference is presumably explained by the name of the order.
In conferring initiatory and other degrees — and most orders confer one or more before full mem- bership is allowed — the lessons are in nearly every instance drawn from the Scriptures.
They all engage in good works. They visit their sick and bury their dead and care for the afflicted. Many of them have homes for their orphans and for their aged and dependent members.
They all stand for morality, good citizenship and temperance. It is required by most, if not all, of them that candidates for membership shall believe in a Supreme Being and shall be of good moral char- acter. In view of the great prohibition movement in the Southern states at the time of this writing it is interesting to know that these orders throw the weight of their influence on the side of temperance.
652 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
In recent years many of them have amended their organic laws so as to prohibit the admission into their ranks of persons engaged in the sale of intoxi- cating liquor. In this movement the Odd Fellows were pioneers, though originally this order was a convivial one. In 1895, after years of discussion, this action was taken by its Sovereign Grand Lodge. Charges can also be preferred against any member of this order guilty of excessive use of liquor, and a trial ordered.
Another valuable characteristic of them all is the emphasis they lay on the brotherhood of man. Most of them have three-word mottoes, as "Friendship, Love and Truth," "Brotherly Love, Eelief and Truth," "Friendship, Charity and Benevolence," but always the idea of brotherhood is there; and there not only in the motto, but in the actual work- ings of the lodge, so that the individual member absorbs it.
All these and other characteristics are common to the fraternal orders — and something better still, for more than any material aid it extends ; more than its influence for morality, civic righteousness, and sobriety, is the influence of the lodge itself on the individual member. Meeting as they do at least once a month, sharing a common secret, working for a common cause, bearing each other's burdens, the work has an ennobling influence that no parti- cipant in it can escape; and so, after all, the reflex action of the lodge constitutes its greatest worth to society.
Perhaps this article would not be complete with- out some mention of certain organizations not at all belonging to the class of societies with which we have been dealing. They have no beneficial feature, no ritual, no secrets to guard, and yet so far-spread is their influence, so large their membership, so dear
FKATER^AL OKGANIZATIONS. 653
to the Southern hearts the interests they serve that it seems as if some mention however brief should be made of them.
They are the patriotic societies which have sprung up since the War of Secession, and exist solely to preserve memories of it and to honor the officers and soldiers who engaged in it.
The surviving soldiers themselves are organized into "The United Confederate Veterans," an ever- thinning line of old men, who once a year gather as the honored guests of one of the larger cities and fight over again their battles and wear their old grey uniforms and march and give the "rebel yell."
The younger men belong to the "Sons of Con- federate Veterans ' ' and the women are the l ' Daugh- ters of the Confederacy."
These organizations have camp halls, in which they hold meetings at stated times, and whose walls they adorn with battle flags and portraits of men distinguished in the service of the Confederacy. They build monuments in memory of the more dis- tinguished officers and monuments to commemorate the dead of a special county or town or battlefield. The living veterans they give crosses of honor, the graves of the dead are a sacred trust to them.
In short they exist but to keep green memories dear to Southern hearts.
HILL MONTAGUE,
Eichmond, Va.
654 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER IX. SOCIAL TENDENCIES IN THE SOUTH.
The Industrial Revolution in the South.
[E last half century has brought a decided change in the social tendencies of the South. This change is due not so much to the aboli- tion of slavery, perhaps, as to the industrial revolution which has each year more and more moved the centers of life and influence from the country to the city. The industrial revolution was in progress in the South long before the War of Secession, and while it was more or less retarded by the institution of slavery, it would ha^te, doubtless, gone on very much as it has gone on had not slavery been abolished by compulsion.
The first railroad track laid in the United States was laid on Southern soil in 1828. The first street car system established in the United States was established in the South. The first electric street car line in this country was built in a Southern city. The progress in railroad building in the South before the war is shown, by the following table:
RAILROADS IN THE UNITED STATES BEFORE 1861.
No. miles No. miles
in 1850. in 1860. Increase.
Southern states 2,335.98 10,712.56 8,376.68
New England states 2,506.48 3,669.39 1,162.91
The remaining states 3,746.33 16,210.90 12,464.57
Virginia 515.15 1,571.16 1,056.01
Massachusetts 1,035.74 1,272.96 237.22
In 1850 there was but one New England state that had as many miles of railroad as Virginia ; and there were but four states in the Union, outside of the South, that had more miles of railroad than Vir- ginia. The little state of South Carolina, which was
SOCIAL TENDENCIES. 655
among the very first to build railroads, had more miles of railroad in 1850 than either Maine, Ver- mont, Rhode Island, Delaware, Indiana, Illinois or Wisconsin. In 1860 Virginia had passed Massachu- setts in railroad mileage, and had about one-half as many miles of railroad as all the New England states combined; and the increase from 1850 to 1860 in the number of miles of railroad constructed was greater in the Old Dominion by ninety-two miles than in all the New England states combined.
The increase in railroad construction was much greater in the South from 1850 to 1860 than in the rest of the country, and the South had by far more railroad milage in proportion to the free population than the rest of the country. The percentage of increase in railroad construction from 1850 to 1860 is given as follows: Southern states, 350; New England states, 46.3; the remaining states of the Union, 332.
Rapid as was the increase in railroad construction in the Southern states from 1850 to 1860, it was no more remarkable than the increase in manufacturing in these states for this period. In 1850, Virginia had $18,109,143 invested in manufacturing, and employed in this industry 25,790 male and 3,320 female workers. In the same year all the Southern states combined had $90,615,214 invested in manu- facturing. In 1860 Virginia had increased the amount of capital invested in manufacturing from $18,109,143 to $26,935,560. This was an increase of nearly $1,000,000 a year for ten years. In all of the Southern states combined the increase of capital invested in manufacturing from 1850 to 1860 was from $90,615,214 to $159,496,592.
The banking business was highly developed in the South in 1860. In a section of country chiefly agri- cultural we do not expect to find the banking busi-
656 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
ness so extensive as in manufacturing and commer- cial centre's. But notwithstanding the fact that the South was chiefly agricultural in 1860, the banking business in this section compared favorably with that in the other parts of the country.
Northern and
Western States with Southern New York City
States. omitted. Amount of capital invested in banks per capita
(free population) $15.4 $10.8
Amount of loans per capita 25.00 18.7
Amount of deposits per capita 7.9 5.5
INCREASE IN BANKING BUSINESS FROM 1850 TO 1860.
Per Cent. Per Cent.
Capital invested In banks 61 63
Loans 61 58
Deposits 100 90
New York is omitted from this comparison because New York city was the business centre of the whole country and belonged to the South as much as it did to the other sections of the country in a business way.
With such activity as has been described, we would naturally expect to find towns and cities developing in the South. In 1860 there were thirty cities in the slave states with populations of more than 8,000 each. The number in each state was as follows: Alabama, two; Georgia, five; Kentucky, four; Louisiana, three; Maryland, two; Missouri, three; North Carolina, one; South Carolina, one; Ten- nessee, two; Texas, one; and Virginia, six. The average population of these thirty cities was 33,331. The total city population of the Southern states in 1860 was 999,947. Nearly one-eighth of the entire white population of the South lived in cities in 1860. Virginia had more than 100,000 of her population living in cities in 1860.
It should be understood that three-fourths of the white people of the South were in no way connected with slavery, and the great majority of slaveholders
SOCIAL TENDENCIES. 657
were poor men, and men in very moderate circum- stances. The white people of the South engaged in manual labor before the war just as they do to-day, as a reference to the census reports of 1860 will confirm.
After Appomattox, the Southerner went to work, and the industrializing of the South, which had been stopped by the war, was again in progress ; and from that day down to the present time the great centres of activity and authority have been rapidly moving from the country to the city. It is this change due to the "moving in" from the country to the city that is giving the direction to the social tendencies of the South to-day. To understand and fully appreciate the present social trend in the South, the real life in the rural South must be known, since it is from this that the trend is taken.
Life in the Rural South.
Life in the rural South was preeminently demo- cratic. The conditions of life here were most favor- able to the development of democracy, and the doc- trine of equal rights to all and special privileges to none permeated and dominated the life of the people everywhere. The men who dictated the public pol- icies of the South before the war received their authority not at the hands of an aristocracy, as is commonly believed, but from the great masses of the people, who have always been the repositories of the political power of the South. The high merit of the men in public life, and the humble origin of a large number of those who rose to places of great responsibility and trust, indicate that this so-called aristocracy was an aristocracy of merit, and that it was in no sense antagonistic to the principles of real democracy.
In the rural South there were no masses and
Vol. 10 — 12
658 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
classes, no problems of capital and labor, no strikes and lockouts. While in a measure men and women moved in different spheres, the lines between them were not closely drawn, and in general the people from all spheres of life — the rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated, the cultured and the uncultured — often came together on a basis of abso- lute equality, and communed with each other as fellow citizens and friends. Men from all walks of life met together at the country store on Saturday afternoon, and on other days when the weather was unfavorable for work on the farms, or when there was something of special interest at the store. They came presumably to buy goods and get the mail, but their real motive was social intercourse. Every store was an important social institution as well as a place of business. Every store was a social club, and this club was thoroughly democratic.
While many children were tutored at home, the school in most communities, especially in the rural South, was democratic.
The church was noted for its simplicity and democ- racy. It was a common meeting-ground for men and women from every sphere of life, and all felt at home within its walls. The church, too, was a great social institution as well as a religious insti- tution. Whether a man was religiously inclined or not, he was glad when the day came to go to church. The people came in carriages, in buggies, in wagons, in carryalls, in ox carts, on horse back, on mule back and a-foot; they came from every direction an;l from far and near. We saw there the man dressed in broadcloth and the man dressed in blue jeans, tlio man in calfskin shoes and the man in heavy brogans, the man with the silk hat and the man with the old rye straw hat, and all brought their dogs with them, and each dog was ready to defend the good name
SOCIAL TENDENCIES. 659
and reputation of his home. The people gathered long before the time for the service; the men gath- ered in groups outside the church to discuss the various subjects of interest, and the ladies gathered on the inside for the same purpose, and though they talked in a suppressed tone, they soon found out all that had happened and anticipated all that might happen. When the time came for the service to begin the men filed into the church to take their seats on the side set apart for them. The sexes did not sit together in the country church. The service was very simple and all took part. On the same bench sat the lady dressed in silk, and the lady dressed in cotton checks ; the lady with the latest style hat, and the lady with the old sun bonnet ; the costly fan and the old turkey wing moved in unison.
Everybody in the rural South had a home, and practically every man could own his own home if he so desired. Land was always plentiful and reason- able in price, and the poor as well as the rich in large measure lived under their own vine and fig tree. The typical home of the South was not the stately mansion in the centre of the great plantation of which we read in novels and certain so-called his- tories. These mansions and big plantations were very few in number, and they have been given a place in Southern life out of all proportion to their importance. The big house was built in many instances after the owner became prominent, and in no way figured in shaping his life and moulding his character. Andrew Jackson lived in the "Hermi- tage" after he became great, but the home that gave "Old Hickory" to the world was a log cabin. The leaders in the old South, in very large measure, as well as the rank and the file of the people came from very simple homes, and were thoroughly trained in the ways of the simple life.
660 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
The typical home of the South of those in good circumstances was a four-room house, with a kitchen in the yard, in many instances built of logs. Many were not so pretentious as this. It was situated in a grove of big trees, and the yard was covered with grass and flowers. The walls of the house were dec- orated with whitewash, and on the floor of one room was a home-made rag carpet. Just outside the door was the water pail and near it a real gourd, which the countryman believed would add very considerably to the refreshing qualities of any drinking water. Not far distant from the house in a shady nook was the cool, sparkling spring, and just below the spring was the spring house in which milk and butter and cream and watermelons and other things were kept cool. Here and there over the farm were scattered apple, peach, pear and cherry trees. Vegetables were raised in abundance, and chickens and turkeys and ducks and geese had a prominent place in the life of this home. In the summer time the family lived in the yard a large part of the time, and in the winter all gathered around the big log fire at night to talk and read and dream of the future :
"A charm from the skies seemed to hallow them there, Which, seek through the world, is not met with elsewhere."
This home was eminently democratic, and its doors were open to all the neighbors of whatever station in life; and the traveler from far and near was more than welcome to partake of its hospitality without money and without price. This home was the centre of social life in the country, and it was within its walls and under the wise direction and the safe protection of its matron, and not in hotels and clubs and public halls, that the young people assem- bled to hold their receptions and parties and other social meetings. This home was indeed a sacred
SOCIAL TENDENCIES. 661
place, and woe came to that man who crossed its threshold to invade its sanctity. Marriage then was "till death do us part," and divorce was almost unknown.
It was this home more than any other institution that moulded and shaped the Southern life, and gave to the Southerner his ideals. It was for this home that he lived and wrought, and dreamed, and in its defense he was ready to lay down his life at any time; it was the source of his strength and the fountain of his inspiration both in private and in public life.
The position here taken that life in the rural South was preeminently democratic is contrary to the commonly accepted theories of Southern life, but it is believed that there is at hand abundant and adequate evidence to sustain this position. However, the limits of this paper forbid more than a mere suggestion of the proof.
A knowledge of the real life in the Virginia col- ony in the Seventeenth century reveals the fact that life in the South was democratic from the beginning. Perhaps the first universal suffrage law ever passed in the world was enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia in 1655-56. The law was as follows :
"Whereas we conceive it something hard and unagreeable to rea- son that any person should pay equal taxes and yet have no vote in elections, therefore it is enacted by the present Grand Assembly that so much of the act for choosing burgesses be repealed as excludes freemen from votes. ' '
This law remained in force for a number of years. Later, suffrage was restricted to freeholders and housekeepers, but this practically gave suffrage to every one who had any place in the community. Still later a land qualification was fixed for suffrage, but this came not from the colony but from the king of England, who thought that the Virginians were
662 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IX THE SOUTH.
loo democratic in their suffrage laws. The prop- erty qualification for suffrage was never large in Virginia, and there was never a time that it was removed beyond the reasonable reach of any self- supporting poor man. But for a number of years before the war there was neither property nor edu- cational qualifications for suffrage. Tennessee never at any time had any property or educational quali- fication for suffrage before the war. These two states may be taken as typical of the South.
In the colony of Virginia in the Seventeenth cen- tury, after the death of Charles the First, when the Cavaliers began to come into this colony, the highest offices in the gift of the people were open to every white man in the colony, and it was not unknown for men who came over as redemptioners to be elected to the highest offices in the gift of the people.
There was nothing like a land monopoly in the South before the war, and in the very nature of the case there could not have been. It is strange that anyone who knows the elementary principles of political economy could ever believe that a land monopoly was practicable or possible in the South at any time. The small farm was the rule in the South before 1860. In fact, there was a larger num- ber of small farms in the South in proportion to population than in the North.
In the New England states, in 1860, there was one farm containing from three to five hundred acres to every seventeen and three-tenths of the free popula- tion ; in the Southern states, one to every twelve and one-tenth of the free population; in the remaining states, one to every fourteen and nine-tenths of the free population.
There was nothing that even remotely approached a slave monopoly in the South before the war. The total number of slaveholders in 1860 was 383,037;
SOCIAL TEXDEMJES. 663
the total number of slaves was 3,948, 713; the aver- age number of slaves to each owner was ten. Only about one-fourth of Southern men owned any slaves at all. That there was the greatest democracy even in slave ownership is shown by the very large pro- portion of slaveholders who owned but one slave. One-fifth of the slaveholders owned only one slave, and more than half of the slaveholders owned from one to five. This of course included the men, women and children, the maimed, the halt and the blind. The great majority of the slaveholders were poor men or men in very ordinary circumstances. What- ever prestige there was in slave ownership was in easy reach of practically all of the people. Slaves were always for sale in the open market and the prices they brought were regulated by the law of demand and supply, just as the price of labor is regulated to-day.
A study of the political life of a group of big slave- holding counties in Virginia reveals the fact that slave ownership and wealth played little or no part in the election of men to public office. A study of the lives of the governors of Virginia gives an idea of the democracy of life in this state before the war. There were eight men who served as chief executives of Virginia from 1841 to 1861. Two of these had been farm hands in their early days, and one had been a tailor. A fourth was the grandson of a school teacher who wrote in the office of a county surveyor and acted as deputy sheriff of Botetourt county. A fifth was the son of a Scotchman who came to Virginia as the employee of a milling com- pany. A sixth was a lawyer and a mail contractor and evidently came from the "plain people." Only one of the eight belonged to a prominent family; this was Gov. Henry A. Wise. One of -these gover- nors who had been a farm hand in his early days
66-i SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
came from tidewater Virginia, and the other came from the territory now included in the state of West Virginia. The governor who had been a tailor came from the "aristocratic town" of Lexington, situated in the richest section of the state. His father was a butcher in this town.
Life in the rural South was democratic; the so-called aristocracy was a democratic aristocracy and had no power over the lives of the people save that which it exercised by virtue of its merit. The rural conditions of the South were most favorable to the growth and development of the democratic spirit, and there was never any substantial effort on the part of the more favored to obstruct its progress.
But within recent years a great economic wave has swept over the South, and this is causing radical changes in the social tendencies of this section. For a number of years there has been a steady flow of the people from the country to the city. The growth of Southern towns and cities since 1870 has been most remarkable.
Not counting Maryland and Missouri among the Southern states, in 1870 there were sixty-three towns and cities in the South of 3,000 population and over ; in 1900 there were 263 towns of 3,000 population and over. In 1870 the total population of Southern towns and cities as above defined was 913,527; in 1900 the population in the towns and cities had increased to 3,265,072. In 1870 eight out of every hundred of the population lived in towns and cities ; in 1900 more than fourteen out of every hundred were found in the towns and cities. The increase of the population in these states for this period was 96 per cent. ; the increase of the urban population was 257 per cent. In 1870 the South had only 151
SOCIAL TENDENCIES. 665
cotton mills; in 1900 there were 663 cotton mills. In 1870 these cotton factories had 6,000 looms; in 1900, 150,000. In 1870 the South manufactured only about 8 per cent, of the cotton manufactured in the United States ; in 1900 nearly one-half of the cotton manufactured in this country was manufactured in the South. In 1900 the South manufactured nearly three times as much cotton as was manufactured in Southern mills in 1890 ; and in 1906 the South manu- factured about twice as much cotton as was manu-. factured in this section in 1900. The production of pig iron increased from 397,301 tons in 1880 to 1,567,000 tons in 1893. In 1880 the coal crop of the South amounted to 6,048,000 tons; in 1893 to 28,000,000 tons.
These figures give some idea of the rapid change from rural to city conditions of life immediately after the war. When it is remembered that com- paratively few foreigners come South and that the increase in the city population is drawn almost exclusively from the rural sections these figures are the more significant as marking a social tendency. But they do not indicate the full significance of this change from the country to the city. It is probable that the proportion of the strong, influential men who are leaving the country for the city is very much larger than that of any other class. The most capable business men, lawyers, doctors and preach- ers are practically all leaving the country for the town and the city. This is depleting the country of that strong and capable leadership it once possessed, and is changing the whole social atmosphere of rural life. It means the moving of the great centers of life and influence and authority from the country to the city; and as a result the city is more and more setting the pace of and dominating Southern life and
666 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
Southern thought. The present social tendencies of the South are the social tendencies of the cities, and it is here that we must study the trend of Southern life and thought at the present time.
In New England and in other sections of this country the people lived in towns and villages from the beginning — even the farmers lived in close prox- imity to each other. Hence the growth of cities did not bring about a very radical change in their manner of life. But in the South each country home was completely isolated and the Southerner had been trained for generations back in this kind of life. This home was a little cosmos; its activities were all its own; it fostered individuality and inde- pendence and was the secret of many of the charac- teristics of the typical Southerner. The change from such a life to the life of the modern city was a most radical one, and the shock of the new condi- tions was sufficient in many instances to break down the strongest and most sacred walls of habit and custom. Hence it is not strange that we are able to observe a marked change in the social tendencies of the South at the present time.
The trend of the South to-day is away from democracy.
The conditions of city life are radically different at almost every point from rural life in the South. In the country everything worked in the interest of democracy, and the democracy of the rural South was largely the product of the environment. In the city almost every influence is against democracy.
In the country there was no one section marked off for the poor and another for the rich. But in the city the poor must move to that quarter reserved for them, and must here live massed together, cut off geographically as well as otherwise from any real
SOCIAL TENDENCIES. 667
coimuimieation with those in better economic cir- cumstances. This quarter for the poor is the least attractive and the least cared for and the most unsanitary and unhealthy section in all of the city. There is nothing in the surroundings to inspire or help, but much to degrade and injure. The rich and the well-to-do go to the attractive section of the city to make their homes, and between them and the poor who perhaps were their neighbors and friends in the country there is an impassable gulf fixed. In the city the strictest social lines are drawn and few there be who would cross them. As the people get closer together they get further apart, and as they become more dependent on each other from an eco- nomic point of view they become more estranged socially. In the rural South, while people of dif- ferent degrees of culture and refinement were recog- nized as belonging to different spheres socially, the lines between these groups were not at all closely drawn as a rule, and could not have been under the conditions of rural life in this section.
The church, once the common meeting place for people from all spheres of life, and hence a great factor in the spread of democracy, has become decidedly undemocratic in the city. Magnificent church structures are erected for the rich, and mis- sions and chapels for the poor; the best preachers serve the rich and the inferior preachers find their place among the poor.
Industrial life in the city is becoming undemo- cratic. In the country there was no employee class, and there could not have been under the economic conditions that were in vogue there. Every employee could become his own master in industry if he so desired, and as a matter of fact practically everyone expected to begin business for himself in a very
668 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
short while. Here it required little or no capital to begin business for one's self, and it was largely a matter of choice at any particular time whether a man should work for himself or work for another. Under such conditions the fact that the employee was in no sense bound in this relation by any eco- nomic necessity made the employer mindful of his welfare and considerate of his demands. As a rule he ate at his employer's table, and slept under his roof, and in every essential particular was treated as an equal. Under such conditions any class antipathy between employer and employee was impossible, and industrial life was necessarily dem- ocratic in character.
But small scale production has become impossible in the city save in a few insignificant enterprises. The big farmer had no advantage whatever in an economic way over the little farmer; he could not close him nor could he shut him out. The rain fell on the little farm just as it fell on the big farm, and the soil produced for the little farmer just as it did for the proprietor of the big plantation. The roads to market were open to each alike, and both sold their products on an open market at prices deter- mined by free competition. In one sense the small farmer had an advantage over the big producer, since in agriculture, different from manufacturing, the law of increasing returns does not apply. In agriculture there was often a larger proportionate return for the expenditure of capital and labor on the small scale than on the large scale, since the personal oversight of the small farmer added some- thing extra to his return. But manufacturing and business in general in the city obey the law of increasing returns — the larger the business the less the cost of each article.
SOCIAL TENDENCIES. 669
For the first time in the history of the South, we find a distinct laboring class, and a distinct capitalist class, and these two classes are getting further and further apart each year, it would seem, in their ideals and policies and sympathies.
The trend of life in the South is towards the economic ideal.
The spirit of American commercialism is getting a very strong hold upon life in the Southern city at the present time. The economic argument is given a much larger place relatively to-day than ever before in the history of the South. While it was always true that wealth was given a large place in the life of the people in the rural South, and while it carried with it a certain social prestige, it was, perhaps, never the determining factor in fixing a man's place in society to anything like the extent that we find it to-day.
The trend of life in the Southern city is away from political activities save for commercial purposes.
In the rural South everybody was interested in political activities, and practically every man was active in politics. The interest then in politics was almost entirely non-commercial. There was prac- tically no money or material consideration in political agitation, and men were not prompted by monetary considerations in their political interests. Here, the best and strongest men in every section were actively interested in politics, and these were the men who moulded and shaped the political poli- cies of their respective communities, and led the political fights in every contest. But in the city we find few of this class even interested in politics save from a selfish commercial point of view. Whether a man shall take an active interest in a political fight in the city, local, state, or national, is determined
670 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
almost wholly by what he believes the effect would be on his individual income. Among men of this class the only consideration in any election is its effect on business, and by business is meant the individual's own business.
The political leaders of the old South grew up in an environment that inspired men with high ideals and fostered unselfish service in behalf of the com- munity; and as a result many of the public servants developed into really great men. Under the present conditions there is little in the environment to encourage the man who would walk in the way that leads to true greatness. The strong tendency is for the man of capacity to use all of his resources to advance his own individual economic interest with little or no regard to the best interest of the com- munity in which he lives. As a result of this trend the South of to-day has many strong men, but few really great men, and very few capable leaders in public life.
The trqnd of life in the Southern city is towards the weakening of the home.
The strength of Southern life and Southern civ- ilization in the past was in the Southern home. Iso- lated as it was, every economic and social force tended to strengthen it. It was from this home that the Southerner got his ideals; it was the centre of his industrial life, his intellectual life, his social life. To him "Home, Sweet Home" had a powerful mean- ing, and he was quick to antagonize anything which he believed tended to place the interests of this home in jeopardy. It was this rural home off to itself, fixing its own policies, and directing its own activi- ties, more than any other institution, more than all other institutions, that gave to the South its dis- tinctive type of civilization. But the life that this
SOCIAL TENDENCIES 671
home gave and the influence it exerted can come only from a home in isolation ; such life and influence can never come from the city home. This change from home life in isolation to so-called home life in the close proximity of the city marks a revolution in the tendency of family life in the South.
The loose customs of the city are conducive to divorce. When the Southern people lived on the farm there were few divorces, but in the Southern city to-day the divorce rate is large, and is on the increase. The South has a lower divorce rate than the rest of the country at the present time, but Southern cities are not far behind Northern cities in this respect.
The rural home of the South furnished the condi- tions for that seclusion and privacy without which home life is practically impossible. In the country home there was an abundance of useful, interesting, and inspiring work for all ; and the character of the work was such that neither the wife nor the husband could leave their duties long at a time. These forces compelled them to make the home the centre of their social life; and so great were the seclusion and the interests involved that there was virtually no temp- tation for either the husband or the wife to become estranged from each other. On the other hand, everything tended to make them more and more dependent on each other as they grew older, and to engender in them a passionate love for their home. But social and economic forces are now working in the opposite direction in the city and are directed against the home ; they are working powerfully for its destruction.
The present trend of life in the South must not be taken necessarily as indicative of the future. The transition from the country to the city has been very
672 SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.
rapid, and the change has been extremely radical. The conditions of life in the city are so absolutely different from those in the country that the South- erner has hardly had time to get his bearings and determine the real trend of his life. There is yet a very strong, conservative force, both in the country and in the city in the South, and it may be that a reaction from the new trend of things will set in before long.
Gus. W. DYEB,
Assistant Professor of Sociology and Economics, Vanderbilt University.
PART VI.
THE AESTHETIC LIFE IN THE SOUTH.
CHAPTER I.
PAINTING IN THE SOUTH.
-_/-€X»'. ^ G/_i_^j=_^_.^r
IME was when drawings and colored drawings were the natural expression of man's thoughts: when he conveyed his ideas by pictures. Then language was de- veloped and pictures were combined with conventional symbols to form writing; finally the symbols usurped the entire function of conveying ideas. But these symbols had to be learned; this writing could not be understood by the unlearned — so pictures were used to convey certain ideas and to teach definite lessons to the unlettered. There was, however, another use for pictures — they could give pleasure to the learned from an aesthetic standpoint ; give enjoyment quite apart from any message they might have to convey. So pictures as expressions of emotions were developed.
Among nations where the written word was very generally understood pictures had the latter func- tion almost entirely. And for the production of these a certain amount of leisure and culture had
Vol. 10—43 673
674 ESTHETIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
to obtain. A people with great practical problems to solve; a public which could teach its lessons or express its emotions through the medium of writing, had no time or great need for paintings. The pro- duction of these for the aesthetic gratification of the painter and beholder must wait upon such time as gave opportunity for a widespread degree of general artistic knowledge.
Conditions Not Favorable to Artistic Development.
It is not to be wondered at that the Southern states have played, as yet, no great part in the annals of painting. That they have produced no great artist is also easily accounted for. Great men seem to be sent in answer to the needs of the times; the South has furnished such men at need. But in America we are still in the stage of development that demands leaders in the political, industrial and educational fields; social and economic conditions are such that the proper background for great art works is not yet at hand. This does not mean that we do not need artists; there is a crying need for them — and each year finds the number growing. But their part is to raise the general standard of appreciation; to cultivate the public taste; to pre- pare the ground from which the great may spring. Each year finds them more numerous and better equipped;* and as they develop they raise the public with them. As the general taste grows the ability of the artist to produce fine work grows. For with- out appreciation an artist cannot reach his full height. Until very recently conditions have been such that the artists have had to seek congenial fields abroad. This fact sometimes irritates the layman. "Why," he asks, "isn't America good enough for them? It's good enough for us." But
PAINTING IN THE SOUTH. 675
the layman does not realize that to produce great artistic works there must be a demand for these ; in one way it is a mere business proposition. It is also much more. The artist must have a cultivated public — an appreciative public will spur him on ; and he must be one of many striving toward the same goal. Without these sympathetic, stimulating sur- roundings he cannot exist as an artist. The history of painting shows scarcely a single instance of a man of note developing in loneliness. The great painters rise from among groups of men of high attainments; true of all men in all walks of life. Let the reader think of some phase of human activity with which he is well acquainted ; he will find abun- dant proof.
So it is not to be wondered at that the South has not yet developed a local "school"; that her activi- ties in artistic lines are small, or that her painters have usually sought other fields. A community with a certain amount of wealth, a society with a fair degree of culture, are necessary — and these have scarcely had time to grow, even in the most populous parts of America. In colonial days there was cul- ture in the South and some little wealth; but too great a number of pressing political questions to allow of much interest in artistic matters ; the settle- ments too small and isolated. During the first half of the Nineteenth century the industrial questions, beside the political ones, left little time for the culti- vation of the arts, and since the war the conditions have been much the same. There has, however, been a rapid advance in recent years; the many earnest workers in the South are busy laying the foundation of general education and culture from which will rise worthy things. And to the artists working in such times all praise should be given. They are pio-
676 AESTHETIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
neers suffering hardships which the layman cannot understand (for spiritual starvation is as keenly felt as material hunger) ; they are forced to spend much of their time in the drudgery of teaching — not only the teaching of definite classes, in which they are often repaid by the admiration and sympathy of their pupils, but in the teaching of the public at large, a dreary and usually thankless task. Honor should be given them, for they, quite as much as the priests and ministers, are helping to keep our souls alive ; fostering in our national growth that love for the beautiful without which our material progress will be vain.
In colonial days the South could show many cen- tres of culture and refinement — Baltimore, Charles- ton and New Orleans had brilliant circles which mingled with their New-World activities much of the Old-World love of art. Their buildings were worthy developments of the architecture of the day in France and England, the gaiety and charm of the cities testified to the high level of general edu- cation, and the citizens were justly reputed appreci- ative patrons of art. But paintings were not actu- ally needed for the teaching of lessons or for the expressing of emotions — the printing-press served such needs; and paintings desired as a means of esthetic enjoyment were things which could be imported. Frequent visits to Europe gave the colo- nists opportunities to have their portraits painted. Thus there was little demand and probably as little encouragement for the development of native talent. When such appeared training was sought abroad, and the number of artists was too small to form bodies of sufficient weight to mould public taste.
The life of Washington Allston shows clearly the conditions of his time. Born in 1779 near Charles-
PAINTING IN THE SOUTH. 677
ton, he was early sent to Newport on account of his health and later graduated with honors from Har- vard. He had shown signs of decided talent, but though he did not lack patrons at home there was little opportunity for training. In common with nearly all of our early painters he had to seek this abroad. With Malbone, the miniature painter who was then working in Charleston, he sailed for Eng- land, and studied under his famous countryman West. Allston traveled as far as Koine, studying the Old Masters and gaining the friendship of noted men; dreamed and painted amid congenial surroundings —and when he did return to America settled in Cambridge, desirous of remaining as far as possible in touch with artistic circles more active than those which he could find in the South. His work was typical of the tendencies of the day — that of making pictures in the ''grand manner" of the later Italian School.
Meanwhile other ideas and ideals were coming to the front in America. The Classic Revival which swept Europe at the beginning of the Nineteenth century had some influence on the works of the artists here, but a desire of expressing more nearly the national ideals — of exploiting the glories of native scenery — was growing, though still dependent on the newer foreign schools for its methods of expression.
The people of the South, however, had little time to give to consideration of such matters. Grave political questions occupied what time was left from the forwarding of industrial affairs. True, in the larger cities there was constant increase of luxury, even if not in always artistic form. The accounts of the second quarter of the century in New Orleans, for instance, tell of the luxury of the times — of a
678 ESTHETIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
great theatre chandelier thirty-six feet in diameter, its cut-glass drops made in London; of the erecting of public monuments, and the laying out of parks. But there could be little encouragement of painters in a period when the nation was rushing into war, nor for many years after peace was again estab- lished.
We are as yet too close to the painters of the last quarter-century to be able to estimate their relative positions in the field of Art; we can only analyze tendencies. And the tendencies of the South are the same as those of the North. In no age has Art been fettered by political considerations or circumscribed by national boundaries. So that the only difference we will find between the North and South will be that of wealth and population — and the resulting gravitation of the more ambitious of the artists toward the great centres of artistic activity, leaving to their no less fortunate and perhaps more-to-be- honored brethren the task of improving local con- ditions.
The widespread reproduction of pictures at the present day — the remarkable facility of printing in color — is doing a great deal to raise the popular standards in artistic fields. This spread of mechan- ically reproduced art, however, will never displace the artist — in fact, it makes the need greater. Ar- tists are needed not only to guide the public taste along the right lines, but also to produce the original art works. :For the perfecting of the camera and the press shows more clearly than ever that it is man's interpretation of nature that we desire. That to be a work of art the production must be stamped with man's intellect — our highest admira- tion is reserved for those works where the soul of
PAINTING IN THE SOUTH. 679
man fepeaks to his fellowmen, revealing to him the Divide in the things about him.
Aside from portraiture, our artists are striving to solve two great problems. The day of the picture as a story-teller is passed; the picture as a symbol or as a conveyor of ideas becomes daily more foreign to our conceptions. The painting which stirs the emotions is the ideal; the painter strives to rival music in its elemental appeal. Hand in hand with this striving goes the desire to solve the difficult problems of light — to reproduce on canvas the lumi- nous qualities of sunlight — the palpitating beauty of atmospheric changes. What the art of the next generation will be, how much further it will break with the old ideals, it is impossible to foretell. We can believe that it will be more than ever sincere- more than ever truthful in the highest sense — more than ever emotional in its appeal to all that is best in man. But we must also believe that since in a great measure the artist is the interpreter of his times, the people must be more sincere in their striv- ing to understand the artists' ideals, more true to a desire for the best in artistic matters, and set high standards and give whole-souled support to those who picture their spiritual life forth to the world.
The following partial list of Southern- born artists and their works will afford the reader some idea of what the South has contributed to the artistic achievement of the Eepublic :
Southern-Born Artists and Their Works.
Allston, W., B. A., born Waccamaw, S. C., 1779; d. 1843. Works: "Jeremiah" (in Yale College) ; "The Witch of Endor;" "Bel- shazzar" (in the Boston Athenaeum); "Spanish Girl" (Metro- politan Museum, New York).
Bridgeman, Frederick A., A. N. A., born in Alabama in 1847. Works: "Interior of a Harem;" "The Funeral of the Mummy" (be- longing to James Gordon Bennett); "The American Circus in Paris."
680 ESTHETIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
Chapman, John Gadsby, N. A., born Alexandria, Va., 1808. Works:
"The Baptism of Pocahontas" (in the rotunda of the Capitol
at Washington); "Etruscan Girl." Connelly, Pierce Francis, born in the South about 1840. Works:
"Thetis" (New York Museum of Fine Arts); "St. Martin and
the Beggar;" "Ophelia." Cranch, Christopher P., N. A., born Alexandria, Va., 1813. Works:
"Afternoon in October;" "Venice." Ezekiel, Moses Jacob, born Richmond, Va., 1844. Works: "Religious
Liberty;" "The Martyr." Fraser, Charles, born Charleston, S. C., 1782; d. 1865. Works:
Miniatures.
Hart, Joel T., born in Kentucky in 1810; d. 1877. Works: "Char- ity ; " " Penseroso. ' ' Henry, Edward L., N. A., born in South Carolina in 1841. Works :
"Interior of a Library;" "Off for the Races." Irving, J. Beaufain, N. A., born Charleston, S. C., 1826; d. 1877.
Works : ' ' Connoisseurs ; " " Wine-Tasters. ' ' Jones, H. Bolton, born Baltimore, Md. Works: "A Heath in Bloom,
Brittany;" "The Ferry Inn." Jouet, Matthew, born in Fayette Co., Ky., 1783; d. 1826. Works:
Portraits. Key, John R., born Baltimore, Md. Work: "Golden Gate, San
Francisco. ' ' Kollock, Mary, born Norfolk, Va., 1840. Work: "Midsummer in the
Mountains. ' '
Mayer, Frank B., born Baltimore, Md., 1827. Works: "The Conti- nentals;" "The Attic Philosopher." Miller, Alfred J., born Baltimore, Md., 1810; d. 1874. Works:
Copies of Old Masters. Mignot, Louis R., N. A., born in South Carolina in 1831; d. 1871.
Works : ' ' Southern Harvest ; " " Sunset off Hastings. ' ' Moss, Ella A., born New Orleans, La., 1844. Works: Portraits. Rinehart, William Henry, born Frederick, Md., 1825; d. 1874. Works:
"A Nymph;" "Clyde." Robbins, Horace W., N. A., born Mobile, Ala., 1842. Works: "New
England Autumn ; " " Harbor Islands, Lake George. ' ' Smith, F. Hopkinson, born Baltimore, Md., 1838. Works: Water- colors. Thompson, A. Wordsworth, N. A., born Baltimore, Md., 1840. Works:
"View of Mt. Etna;" "The School House on the Hill." White, John Blake, born in South Carolina in 1781; d. 1859. Works:
"The Battle of New Orleans;" "The Burning of Old St.
Phillip's Church."
HUGER ELLIOTT,
Director Ehode Island School of Design.
SCULPTURE IN THE SOUTH. 681
CHAPTER II. SCULPTURE IN THE SOUTH.
HE contributing causes back of all condi- tions are never without interest, and to judge the latter without reference to the former is as unjust as to separate a man from his age in estimating his character, or to meas- ure action without regard to time or circumstance. That the American people were long indifferent to their lack of an art consciousness, and longer still in giving expression to artistic impulse in creative work is not denied by their most prejudiced defenders, but the barrenness of the first two cen- turies of the new world's life in all matters pertain- ing to art is not without explanation; was indeed but a well-nigh inevitable result of situation and environment.
Men who must fight for existence, for food and shelter, for governmental experiments and for prin- ciples as unyielding as death have little time or desire for the consideration of those things that belong to a different phase of civilization ; and even after the establishment of that for which the strug- gle was made, commercial supremacy and industrial opportunity must be attended to before wealth and understanding can prepare the way for the awaken- ing and development of the art spirit. The Ameri- can colonies were at first too close to elemental needs to give great thought to those things that make for culture and the beauty of living; and later, in the adjustment to new conditions, the solving of untried problems and the facing of unexpected situations in the expansion of Democracy's experiment, there was
682 AESTHETIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
demanded all the skill and ability and concentration that the new country could command, and not until education had become the possession of many, rather than of the few, was it to be expected that the realization of other needs should be generally understood.
The Awakening of the Artistic Temperament.
Science and literature, music and painting, are ever first to make their appeal, ever quickest to awaken response, while that form of art termed sculpture is generally slowest in development, with only here and there men who are masters in it. America had no sculptural heritage or tradition. Notwithstanding the various races which make what are called Americans, the latter are essentially Eng- lish, and at the time of the settlement of this coun- try British sculpture practically did not exist at all. England's recognition of foreign artists and sculptors, however, had long been liberal, and to this is due, perhaps, the fact that the Virginian colonies, almost entirely English and largely made up of Cavaliers whose leaders were men of educa- tion and refinement as well as adventure, were the first to give evidence of familiarity with and love of the plastic art ; and to Virginia is attributed the earliest patronage of sculpture in America. Here was no puritan hatred of graven image or symbol, which were thought to be either a form of idolatrous representation or shocking shamelessness, nor was there here the prejudice of ignorance which pre- vented the purchase of the sculptor's work, and here the first commission for a marble statue was given, a statue to Lord Botetourt, which is standing to-day in front of William and Mary College in Williams- burg, Virginia. In 1771 the General Assembly of
SCULPTURE IX THE SOUTH. 683
Virginia voted a large sum of money to erect a marble statue to Lord Botetourt, the lamented gov- ernor of the colony, which statue was made in Lon- don in 1773, by Eichard Hay ward, and in doing this the first art movement of the country was started — the first example of the sculptor's skill 1 irought to the new world was this public expression of love and gratitude to an honored character from an appreciative people.
On Dec. 17, 1781, Virginia again voted a commis- sion for a work of art, this time a bust of Lafayette, to be made by the great French sculptor, Houdon, which bust is still in the rotunda of the state capitol in Bichmond, and in the centre of this same rotunda is what Gilbert Stuart declared was the most per- fect representation of Washington that exists, one of the few art treasures of the country which is not the work of modern times.
Soon after the declaration of peace, following the close of the War of the Ee volution, the General Assembly of Virginia decreed that a statue of Wash- ington should be made, and that Houdon should be employed to make it, and in the selection of Houdon for this work the Virginians early gave evidence of a discriminating knowledge of the sculptors of their day, and an appreciation of sculptural art that could only come from a cultured familiarity with the same.
In order that his work should be as perfect as pos- sible, Houdon sailed for America in 1785, where at Mount Vernon he took a cast of Washington's face, head and upper part of his body, with minute meas- urements of his person, and in nothing that the great sculptor has done, perhaps, does there lie a larger hope of immortality for himself than in the execu- tion of this statue, ordered in the twelfth year of a yet struggling commonwealth. Through the years
684 ESTHETIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
that followed, though the South, like other sections of the country, produced no native sculptor of note, the artistic temperament of the people frequently revealed itself in their homes, and in many of the latter were specimens of sculptural art brought over from Europe, either as personal purchases or commissions to others. At Montpelier, the beauti- ful home of President Madison, one of its twenty- two rooms was set apart for statuary, the collection of which was Madison's supreme delight, and at the time of the South 's greatest prosperity many of the large estates boasted of marble reliefs and busts, and in their gardens were pieces of statuary brought from Italy and France.
With this atmosphere as a possession there seems, on the surface, but little pardon for the South 's slowness in giving to the country any sculptors worthy of the name ; but when it is remembered that the history of American sculpture barely includes a hundred years, that until the first large Exposi- tion (the Centennial of 1876) there had been no vital artistic awakening of the people as a whole, that the South, an agricultural section without large centres to furnish the stimulus of contact and asso- ciation, or the establishment of museums and art galleries and art schools to serve as inspiration for artistic expression, it is not greatly to be wondered at that she took no leading part in the pioneer art work of the country.
Up to the middle of the Nineteenth century but few American sculptors had become men of note in their profession, but to one of that few Virginia was prompt in attesting her pride, and in 1849 she commissioned Thomas Crawford, a native of New York but at that time a resident of Eome, to make the Washington monument for the capitol square in Eichmond, at a cost of $260,000.
SYMBOLIC FIGURE OF "THE SOUTH," SURMOUNTING JEFFERSON DAVIS MONUMENT, RICHMOND, VA.
SCULPTURE IN THE SOUTH. 685.
Progress Since the War.
Since the close of the War of Secession, notwith- standing the absence of wealth, the overthrow of cherished customs and traditions and the compelling necessity of facing social and economic problems for which history offered no precedent, the Southern people have erected to their Confederate dead more memorials in stone and bronze and marble than any people of any age have ever done in any land, and there is no Southern state but has its monuments and statues to tell their story to the passing world. Virginia alone, since 1865, has erected over one hundred monuments and statues in memory of the soldiers and statesmen who suffered in her defense, while Maryland's chief city is called the Monumental City of all America's broad lands. It is not claimed that each of these is a work of art. The South, like all other sections, has suffered at the hands of untrained committees and unskilled sculptors, but in many instances these memorials are fine examples of portraiture and idealism in stone, and bear evi- dence of the artistic outreach of the people which gives promise of an ever-deepening insistence upon better and better work, and an ever-widening understanding of true art values.
Not only in open spaces, in parks and squares, but in college halls and libraries, in private homes and public buildings this love of sculpture is manifesting itself more and more worthily in the South, and in many of the states are the works of both native and foreign sculptors, commissions to whom were given by private parties as memorial gifts to their city, by legislatures who wished to honor distinguished characters, and by patriotic societies who have erected monuments to mark historic sites and noble deeds.
686 ESTHETIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
Southern Sculptors.
In the list of American sculptors who have won fame and recognition the South 's quota is not small, and in proportion to population not discreditable. Some of the most excellent work in the country to- day is from the studios of Southern-born men, many of whom, for justifiable reasons after years of study abroad, have established themselves in the North; but the most distinguished sculptor in the South, Edward Virginius Valentine, still lives in his native city of Richmond, Virginia, and to him the art world of America is in large debt for his uncompromising insistence upon a standard of work which shall not surrender to the commercialism of the age. Among the sculptors of the South, whose work is well known, are Edward Kemeys, of Georgia; William Henry Binehart and Ephraim Keyser, of Maryland (Doug- las Tilden, the most eminent sculptor of the Western coast, is also of a Maryland family, though not a native of the state) ; Amory C. Simons, of South Carolina ; Joel Hart and Enid Yandell, of Kentucky (the latter being the first woman admitted to mem- bership in the National Sculpture Society) ; Alex- ander Gait, William Barbee, Edward Virginius Val- entine, William Cooper, Sir Moses Ezekiel, Augus- tus Lukeman, William Eandolph 0 '-Donovan, and William Shepherd, of Virginia; while Texas feels entitled to claim as her own daughter Elizabeth Ney, so long was she a resident of Austin, and is proud of the adopted citizenship in San Antonio of Pompeo Cappini. Although not all native born sons of Louisiana, New Orleans has had within her gates a number of sculptors, Peter Cordelli living there in 1820, and P. Foy in 1838, but at present A. Peretti and E. P. Smith are the only ones left.
In that particular form of art termed sculpture
JEFFERSON DAVIS. A statue in bronze by Edward V. Valentine.
ARCHITECTURE IN THE SOUTH. 687
no section of the country offers greater promise of achievement than the South, for here has ever been the artistic spirit and impulse, and here are to be found the richest inheritances of those influences and qualities which are necessary for the proper development of native ability and genius, for the exercise of creative power and intuition; and to the spirit of idealism which is peculiarly a possession of her sons and daughters, to their quick response and appreciation, their temperamental subtleties and sympathies, their spiritual insight and emotional abandon will the country yet look, perhaps, for its best interpretations of the true art spirit, the high- est expression of which is the soul of the artist in the work of his hands.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Bosher, Kate Langley: A Sculptor of the South (Outlook Vol. LXXXIIL, p. 961); Dabney, Edith: Famous Colonial Estates; Elwell, Frank Edwin: American Art; Garland, Hamlin; Edward Kemeys (McClure's, Vol. V., p. 120) ; Ladsgast, Richard; Enid Yandell the Sculptor (Outlook Vol. LXX., p. 81) ; Taft, Lorado: The History of American Sculpture; Tyler, Lyon G. : Williamsburg.
KATE LANGLEY BOSHER,
Richmond, Va.
CHAPTER III. ARCHITECTURE IN THE SOUTH.
General Character of Architecture in the South.
HE architecture of the older South was simply a continuation of standard forms of European architecture modified to suit con- ditions in a new country. The architecture of colonial times, particularly of the Eighteenth century, and of the national period up to the War
688 AESTHETIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
of Secession has a certain historic and romantic interest. Since about the middle of the Nineteenth century, however, there has been a steady tendency towards architectural uniformity throughout the United States, the outcome, in part, of rapid com- mercial development with the consequent disappear- ance in the South of the highly individualized plan- tation life. Indeed, the one strictly original Ameri- can contribution to architecture is the "skyscraper,** or steel-frame office-building, typical of industrial preeminence and urban triumph in our national life. The average modern city house has, because of space limitation, little or no architectural character, and it is left to the church or public building to pre- serve the older traditional forms. The present sketch will therefore confine itself to a considera- tion of the architecture of the colonial and ante-bellum South.
Speaking broadly, we find in the South three pre- vailing types of architecture — the English, the French, and the Spanish, introduced by the colonists from those nationalities in the Sixteenth, Seven- teenth, and Eighteenth centuries. The English archi- tecture, or "Anglo-classic," mainly the " Queen Anne" and the "Georgian," with perhaps a few scattering examples of the "Elizabethan and Jaco- bean," is found in Virginia, Maryland, the Caro- linas, Georgia and the states contiguous to them; while traces of the French appear in Louisiana (chiefly in New Orleans) and adjacent territory, and of the Spanish in Florida, Louisiana, Texas and the Southwest. It is, of course, impossible to locate definitely these three types, for all modern architec- ture is more or less composite, and, besides, the racial blendings of population caused several styles of architecture to exist side by side. In general, when we speak of Southern architecture we mean
ARCHITECTURE IX THE SOUTH. 689
the architecture of the English colonial type, and it is accordingly proper to consider the English first.
For the purposes of this outline it will be suffi- cient to characterize briefly three classes of build- ings: (1) Domestic or living houses; (2) Public buildings, including educational institutions ; and (3) Churches. Before treating these classes specifically, however, we need to bear in mind a few fundamental facts of an inclusive nature as to the prototypes of the several forms of Southern architecture. Eng- lish, French and Spanish architecture had each its "renaissance"; that is, a revival of classic char- acter after passing through such stages of variation from the original classic as the Romanesque and the Gothic. The types perpetuated in the New World are therefore modifications of the several renais- sance forms of western Europe. The colonists from the several European countries simply tried to adapt these more or less modified classic types of their old-world homes to the pioneer surroundings of the new world. The English colonists reproduced a more severely classic form than the French and Spanish, for the latter had through an admixture of semi-oriental elements reached a more varied character.
This striking difference must, however, be noted, that while the prototypes of the buildings erected by the colonists in the wilds of America had their expression in brick and stone, the colonists had to express their architectural ideas in wood, or fre- quently at best in a combination of wood and brick, because the great forests at their doors furnished their main building material. Details worked out in stone in the older country must be realized in wood in the new. Perhaps the chief interest in our earliest type of building arises from the rare skill with which the builder carried out the delicate details
Vol. 10 — 44
690 .ESTHETIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
in his wood-carving and in liis refined ornamentation of rough, perishable material. Indeed, there is often a subtle line of distinction traceable in this earlier work which has not since been reproduced. Local necessity or convenience frequently caused, too, a variation in dimensions from the conventional in certain details of the classic ' ' orders. ' ' For instance, the regulation height of the Corinthian column is ten times the diameter of its base, of the Ionic nine times, of the Doric and Tuscan six. In most colonial work the columns are considerably longer, some of them as much as fifteen times the base diameter, having thus an attenuated appearance. The foliated capitals and the cornices have likewise been modi- fied. The effect is less virile than in classic archi- tecture proper. From these preliminary statements as to the general character of the Southern classic architecture we may pass to a brief description of the typical colonial mansion as it stands to-day.
Domestic Architecture of English Origin.
The favorite form of house on the large Southern plantation in the Eighteenth century was architec- turally similar to the type of English country houses known as "Queen Anne" or "Georgian." It was usually square or oblong, containing two stories, and sometimes small roof-rooms with dormer windows, above a basement in which were kitchen and store- rooms and in many houses the- family dining-room. On the first floor there was a large hall in the centre, with spacious rooms on either side used as drawing- rooms, library, living room, and dining-room. Bed- rooms were on the second floor and there were some- times small guest rooms above, under the roof. In shallow, oblong houses the stairway rose from the side of the main hall, but in deeper, square houses often from the rear of the spacious hallway. The
AECHITECTUEE IN THE SOUTH. 691
interior walls were wainscoted with heavy paneling, mantels were high and often elaborately carved, win- dows were several feet above the floor, with rather small panes and heavy facings. Doors were heavy and paneled, and in the larger mansions front doors had elaborate fan-work arches above. There was often a side-porch, as well as a front and back porch, the side-porch serving as entrance to a back hall. Chimneys were sometimes concealed in the walls, but in frame houses usually exposed. Oblong houses had the gable roof, and square houses the hip-roof. Most Southern colonial mansions had conspicuous front porches with tall classic columns more commonly of the Ionic, Doric or Tuscan order. Herein the South- ern mansion differed most strikingly from the New England colonial house, the latter, as a rule, having no extensive columned portico. From the central mansion wings were sometimes built apart from but connecting with the main house by covered passage- ways, as, for instance, at Lower Brandon, on the James River, in Virginia. Back of the mansion at a short distance in the yard one often finds the kitchen, usually of brick, besides the "smoke-house" and other smaller buildings necessary for the con- duct of an extensive plantation community. The negro quarters, a group of square or oblong cabins built of brick, or more commonly of logs and "chinked," were distant several hundred yards from the mansion. Such a grouping of mansion and outhouses may still be seen at Washington's house on the Potomac, Mount Vernon.
Perhaps the most famous colonial homesteads of the older English type are those still standing along the James River between Richmond and Hampton Roads, such as Lower Brandon, home of the Harri- sons; "Westover, of the Byrd family; and Shirley, of the Carters. Lower Brandon and the later Upper
692 AESTHETIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
Brandon are excellent examples of the manor house elongated by wings joined to the original building by corridors. Westover and Shirley illustrate the square Queene Anne and Georgian type with front, back and side porches, making at least two fronts, one towards the river and the other towards the plantation and the road to the ' ' court-house. ' ' These square-built houses, particularly Shirley, bear some resemblance to a French chateau, being quite unlike the low rambling buildings at Lower Brandon. In all these houses the central hall and the staircase are remarkably fine, and the visitor is impressed with the antique hatchments set over certain doors. These houses are built of dark red brick imported from England in the late Seventeenth and early Eight- eenth centuries. Southern houses of the late Eight- eenth and early Nineteenth centuries show greater fondness for the oblong shallow type, with one ell, more extensive porches and taller columns. In all these colonial and later Anglo-classic houses the large open fireplace formed an attractive, homelike feature, while the heavy outer window blinds securely closed in the little domestic world and shut out the larger, a condition which made the provin- cialism of plantation life socially charming. To add to this feeling of security the builders of many older city houses surrounded them with high brick or stone walls, quite in the English fashion. The backyards to these houses were often much larger than the front — indeed, many houses had no front yards, standing immediately on the pavement-side — and over these rear garden-yards looked broad upper and lower galleries, favorite family resorts in pleasant weather. Many of these walled-in English houses may still be seen in such old cities as Charleston, Savannah and Richmond; as, for instance, the Val- entine house in Eichmond (now the Valentine
ARCHITECTURE IN THE SOUTH. 693
Museum) built by an Englishman, and with its wind- ing stairway, splendid rooms, massive carvings, and quaint wine-cellar, one of the finest examples of the colonial city mansion. Attention should also be called to the stately "White House of the Confed- eracy" (the Confederate Museum), in the same city, a noble type of the older architecture rising three stories above a basement, with eight tall classic col- umns in its portico. Another striking adjunct of country houses was the ornamented gateway with its stone or brick pillars surmounted by some symbolic design between which massive iron gates swung open in hospitable welcome. Such a gateway, battered down during the War of Secession, but now happily restored, may be seen at Westover.
Prevailing Architectural Types in Public Buildings and Churches.
The public buildings — capitols, courthouses, town halls, hotels, colleges and universities — of the older South were, as a rule, severely classic in design, usually not more than two stories high and with heavy columns in front.* The old Virginia state capitol, for four years capitol of the Confederate States, may be mentioned as typical. This is a Greek temple with large front portico and stately Eoman Ionic columns, while pilasters of the same order adorn the walls. Eecently built wings spoil the simple artistic effect. This represents the sim- plest form of architecture in public buildings. Vari- ous modifications of the norm are found through- out the South, such as the addition of the dome, a Roman development, or of the cupola, a further development of the dome, or of wings. County courthouses are of all sorts of designs, though the prevailing type is classic. The old Southern tavern or inn was usually two stories with lower and upper
* The foundations of the old capitol at Jamestown have been traced. The building was probably in the Jacobean style.
694 ESTHETIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
galleries in front and, if circumstances permitted, on two sides, differing from its English prototype in that it was not built around an inner court. Almost all the older colleges and universities of the South are classic in design. A favorite building — as at the University of Mississippi, for instance — was a cen- tral Doric or Ionic temple. Jefferson's well-known plan for the University of Virginia, like that of his own Monticello, varied from the Greek by the substitution of the rotunda crowned by a dome, the general effect suggesting the Roman Pantheon. Extending from each side of the front portico and on the ground floor are cloistered passages leading to wings. A row of professors' houses in severely classic style, alternating with students' lodgings, extends in front of and at right angles to each of these wings enclosing "the lawn," or rectangular space fronting the rotunda. The effect is altogether pleasing, and the arrangement is unique among American colleges and universities. Special men- tion should be made of the quaint, almost fantastic- looking building of the old Virginia Medical College at Eichmond — an Egyptian temple with its Karnak columns and its symbolically ornamented exterior walls, one of the very few examples of Egyptian architecture in America.
Church architecture in the older South was Greek or Gothic or English Renaissance influenced more or less by Sir Christopher Wren's prolonged study of French architecture. Ecclesiastical architecture of the Eighteenth century, both in England and America reflects this influence. This is seen in the steeples of such famous Southern churches as St. Michael's and St. Philip's, in Charleston, S. C., and the old Bruton Parish church at Williamsburg, Va., which at oiice suggest the steeples of St. Mary le Bew and St. Bride 's, London, planned by Sir Chrir1-
ARCHITECTURE IN THE SOUTH. 695
topher Wren. In the American churches the English Renaissance steeples are imposed upon classic tem- ples, generally with good effect. The artistic effect was sometimes spoiled, however, by the imposition of attenuated spires or diminutive cupolas. Other older churches are almost pure Gothic in design,* with pointed or square towers, with delicate orna- mental details, and with buttresses, suggesting the Gothic cathedral. The colonial churches usually had roomy box-pews, high pulpits, and extensive gal- leries with reserved space for negroes. Country churches were, of course, plainer in architectural details than the city churches, but they were, as a rule, of the same general design, with possiblv a preference for Gothic outline.
The French and Spanish Types
It remains to consider briefly the French and Spanish types of architecture in the South. The city of New Orleans furnishes excellent examples of each. The Spaniard controlled all that extreme southern border from Florida to the far southwest long before the Frenchman made his influence felt on the lower Mississippi, though the Huguenots had in the Sixteenth century contended in vain with the Spanish settlers for Florida. Still, it is impossible to separate the two nationalities in dealing with the history of all that southern region of Florida, Louisiana, and the Gulf coast, so intermingled are the two peoples in their outward expression. The French and Spanish examples in architecture are modified designs following the forms and details of buildings in the mother countries, the French using the heavier forms and more ornate decorations, and the Spanish showing greater wall surfaces and deep
* The old ruined church-tower still standing at Jamestown suggests this type of architecture with modifications, In Its round-arched doorway, for Instance.
696 ESTHETIC LIFE OP THE SOUTH.
shadow-lined cornices so inseparably associated with the architecture of Spain. These Spanish examples show less refinement than the English structures, less seriousness and exactness of detail, but the Moorish influence made the Spanish architecture more striking than either the French or English.
Spanish architecture in the South and West, as seen in many forts, churches, and missions, closely resembles Spanish Eenaissance buildings of the Six- teenth century. The arcade, for instance, is a fre- quent characteristic in the old prisons, missions, the famous Cabildo in New Orleans, with its arched windows and oriental-looking cupola, and before the shops. Rows of one-story houses with low- pitched roofs and lace-work ornament above the tiled eaves illustrate the humbler type of Spanish street- dwelling ; while the taller houses, with their iron bal- conies projecting over the narrow street or with an occasional bridgeway to the opposite house, give the impression of a continental Spanish or French city. The country houses in that region, with their low eaves extending over wide verandahs on all sides attached to strong columns rising from the ground, surrounded by semi-tropical plants, show Spanish and French architecture in harmonious setting. The old gateways still stand at St. Augustine as remind- ers of the military strength of the ancient city before the days of the pleasure palaces, the splendid Ponce de Leon and the Alcazar.
Blendings of the French and Spanish appear throughout this Gulf region, reflecting influences of the architectural Renaissance. Churches show a union of French and Spanish Gothic details, St. John's steeple ends in a Saracenic turret, and the Jesuit church is crowned with a Moorish dome. It is all a great mixture — the low and rambling French market, the chateau, with its Mansard roof, so popu-
POTTERY IN THE SOUTH. 697
lar over the country forty or fifty years ago; the French opera-house, the Ursuline Convent, the city mansions built around an inner court as in Paris itself. This French and Spanish architecture has served to give a sort of piquancy to the more serious English forms and has, in general, made a pleas- ing contribution to the almost infinite variety of American architecture.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Bannister and Fletcher: History of Architecture; Ferguson: History of Architecture; Foster: Colonial Capitals; Glenn: Some Colonial Mansions; Harland: Some Colonial Homesteads; Johnston: Highways and Byways of the South; King: New Orleans, the Place and the People; Moore: Gothic Architecture and Benais- sance Architecture; Powell: Historic Towns of the Southern States; Page: The Old South; Eavenel: Charleston, the Place and the Peo- ple; Ralph: Dixie, or Southern Scenes and Sketches; Sturgis: European Architecture and How to Judge Architecture; Schuyler: American Architecture; Handbooks and Histories of Richmond (in Virginia State Library) ; consult Index of Magazine of American History, of Southern History Association Publications, and of the old Literary Messenger.
JOHN CALVIN METCALF,
Professor of English, Richmond College.
CHAPTER IV. POTTERY IN THE SOUTH.
HE South has few assets more valuable than her clays. This has been called the "Age of clay," as well as the "Age of steel," and it hardly seems an exaggeration when we remember the ever increasing variety of clay prod- ucts, from the vast cement dam and dyke, the im- mense modern fire-proof building, through the infi- nite diversity of pavements, bricks, tiles, and even fence posts, wheels, false teeth and tombstones, up to the finest grades of artistic porcelain.
698 AESTHETIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
The United States Geological Survey's maps and reports show that the Southern states have an inexhaustible store of clays suitable for every use, in deposits as phenomenal for richness and variety as for their vastness of extent. As yet these mines of wealth are comparatively little worked. The South in 1905 furnished only 13 per cent of the manufac- tured clay products of the United States. Her out- put, however, is increasing very rapidly of late, hav- ing risen from a value of about $12,500,000 in 1900, to nearly $18,000,000 in 1905.
Historical.
The pottery industry of the South was flourishing before the white men of Europe knew that America existed. Primitive earthen vessels were molded by hand from coarse clay by the Indians along the Atlantic coast long before Columbus sailed, and to this day a similar pottery is made by the modern Cherokee Indians of North Carolina. A much finer pottery was made by the Mound Builders of the South, and often painted, decorated, or modelled.
In 1612 the first American brick were burned in Virginia, and in Virginia the first American pot- teries were at work before 1644, making coarse earthenware for household use. The first English pottery on record, the old "Bow ware," was made of a clay imported from North Carolina, called "Unaka," the Indian name of the Smoky Mountains.
About 1766 Josiah Wedgwood, who himself used clays imported from the Carolinas and Florida for his fine wares, was much alarmed lest South Carolina should outstrip England in the pottery industry. "They have every material there," he wrote, "equal, if not superior, to our own * * * and make us
POTTERY IN THE SOUTH. 699
very uneasy for our trade and our posterity." Wedgwood's fears, however, were premature; for Mr. Bartlem, the Staffordshire potter, who had set up his "Pott works" in South Carolina, met only with * ' death and disaster, ' ' and for sixty or seventy years there is no record of whatever small potteries may have existed in the South. In 1827 a stoneware pottery was established in Baltimore by Mr. Ferine. This soon became "M. Ferine and Sons," and it still exists, manufacturing stoneware, terra cotta, drain pipe, and fire clay chimney pipe.
In 1829, in Louisville, Ky., the "Lewis Pottery Co." was incorporated to make Queensware and china, and made a fair grade of cream colored ware, but dissolved in 1836. Here, in 1840, "Hancock and Son" started a stoneware pottery, which seems to have lasted only a year.
In 1846 the "E. and W. Bennett Pottery," of Bal- timore, the first firm in the South for making the finer grades of pottery, was founded by Edwin Bennett, of England.
From 1848 to 1856 William Wolfe carried on a pottery near Blountville Courthouse, Tenn., and made glazed earthenware. In 1875 he moved to Wise county, Virginia. Up to 1881, at East Big- Stone Gap, he continued to make a fine hard brown pottery or stoneware, some of the pieces decorated with incised designs.
At James River, Va., in 1850, Moro Phillips started a stoneware pottery, but in 1853 the works were moved to Philadelphia, and in 1867 to Camden, N. J., where they are still operated.
In 1856 William H. Farrar, a stockholder in the "United States Pottery Co.," of Bennington, Vt., established a pottery at Kaolin, S. C., to make fine white ware and porcelain, from the beds of kaolin
700 ESTHETIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
in the neighborhood, that had hitherto only been used for whitewashing. A stock company was formed, of which the Lamars and Alexander Ste- phens were members. Potters were imported, and some fair porcelain and good white granite and cream-colored wares were produced. In 1858 the works were moderately successful, and were making table, toilet and other white wares. After the begin- ning of the war they made earthenware water pipes, and porcelain and pottery telegraph insulators for the Confederate government. This was probably the only pottery in the South to make white ware during the war. It was destroyed by fire in 1863 or 1864. Examples of its products are now very scarce, but some, of excellent porcelain and white Parian, are owned in Charleston and other places. At the close of the war another company was organ- ized but did not flourish. The fine white clay is now mined and shipped, largely to manufacturers of wall paper.
In 1862 Col. Thos. J. Davies, of South Carolina, was induced by Anson Peeler, of Vermont, to start the manufacture of fire-brick, near Bath, S. C. Peeler was a skilled mechanic and carpenter, and Colonel Davies furnished the capital and slaves to do the work. A high grade of fire brick was made, equal to any imported. These were used in large quantities in the great furnaces for casting ord- nance, and the powder mills of the Confederacy. In 1863, in response to a pressing demand, earthen jars and pitchers, cups and saucers, were made by the negro workmen, who used for the purpose the primi- tive "kick-wheel." The Confederate hospitals were furnished with thousands of these, clumsy in shape, black or brown in color, and without ornament, but of good quality, and so well suited to the needs of
POTTERY IX THE SOUTH. 701
the time that in 186-1 the factory was unable to sup- ply the demand. In 1865 it was closed permanently. Dr. E. A. Barber says probably the history of this little pottery is more closely interwoven with the Confederacy than that of any other industrial enter- prise of the tune. He describes an interesting survival of the Bath pottery that he has seen in various collections, labelled, "Native Pottery, made in Africa." These are weird " monkey jugs," made in the form of an African face, of dark clay, with eyeballs and teeth of a lighter clay, the whole cov- ered with a dark purplish glaze. These were made, in their leisure time, about 1862, by the negro work- men, and are probably closely akin to their native African art.
There is a record of one other pottery in the South during the war, that of the "Stevens Brothers," near Milledgeville, Ga., where crude earthenware was made. These works now produce tiles and fire brick.
Since the war and the long paralysis of "Recon- struction," a new pottery industry has sprung up in the Southern states, and in recent years has increased so rapidly in importance that there seems every reason why, with its fine clays and its return of prosperity, the South should become one of the great pottery centres of the world.
Modern Clay Industries of the Southern States.
Maryland. — In 1906 Maryland ranked fifteenth in the United States and fourth among the Southern states in the value of her clay products. Their total value was $2,136,539, of which $1,763,040 came from brick and tile, and $373,499 from pottery. Her Mount Savage fire-clay is one of the best in the country, and she produces a great variety of other
702 AESTHETIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
valuable clays, including true kaolin. Her chief clay product is common brick, but she has a number of potteries, among them two of the most important in the South.
"The Edwin Bennett Pottery Co.," of Baltimore, founded in 1846, is one of the oldest potteries in the United States. They make now, for the most part, a high grade of table and toilet articles, in semi- porcelain cream colored ware, that Dr. Barber com- mends for correct design and refined decorations. He also admires their jardinieres in deep ultra- marine blue and olive green glazes. Many of their shapes for under-glaze work are plain, simple and good ; and they have produced some admirable blue under-glaze, or in-the-glaze naturalistic painting. Their "Albion" ware, decorated in "slip" with Eastern scenes, by Miss Kate Berg and Miss Brinton, of Philadelphia, is highly praised by Dr. Barber, and is described by Dr. Marcus Benjamin as "worthy of commendation as a distinct art ware." This pottery for a short time made an excellent grade of "Parian" and "Belleek" wares. The famous "Eebekah at the Well" teapot was origi- nated by Mr. Bennett in 1851, and the firm has always continued to manufacture it to supply the never failing demand. Indeed, it has been copied by nearly every pottery in the country, for many tea-drinkers have discovered that a cup of tea is never so delicious as when poured from a brown "Rebekah."
The "Chesapeake Pottery," of Baltimore, was started in 1881 by Messrs. D. F. Hayn.es and Co. Dr. Barber says though among the youngest of American potteries it has already won a high repu- tation for a variety of excellent and novel bodies and glazes, and for beauty and originality in its
POTTERY IN THE SOUTH. 703
designs. The motto of the firm is worthy of men- tion: "If there be one truth which the Teacher of all has taught us in His works more clearly than another, it is the perfect compatibility of the highest utility with the greatest beautjr." Their first prod- uct was a superior majolica, their next a cream colored decorated ware. Their "Severn" ware, a fine vitreous body, of a subtle grayish olive tint, secured without artificial coloring, is said by Dr. William Prime to mark an era in the history of American ceramics. In 1885 "Parian" wares were produced, heads in relief, cattle heads, Thorwald- sen's "Seasons," etc. The large and finely exe- cuted "Calvert Vase" attracted much attention at the Columbian Exposition. Their "Holland Sun- set" is a striking ware with a solid yellow ground passing into vivid green, the yellow portion deco- rated with Dutch scenes in twilight effects. Among their artistic successes are a Nasturtium toilet set, and a Lotus jardiniere, designed by Miss Sabina Wells, of Charleston. They manufacture also a great variety of lamps, clocks, decorative table and toilet articles.
West Virginia in 1905 ranked tenth in the United States and first among the Southern states in the value of her clay products. This amounted to $2,783,312, of which brick and tile made $1,194,757, and pottery $1,588,555. West Virginia is richest in fire clays, but also produces a variety of brick and pottery clays. Her most important clay product is pottery, and Wheeling is one of the most impor- tant pottery centres in America.
The "Wheeling Pottery Co." was organized in 1879 to manufacture a staple line of white semi- porcelain ware. After five years a decorating department was established. In 1889 a second fac-
AESTHETIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
tory, known as "La Belle," was added to the plant; and in 1900 the company acquired a third factory, that of "The Ohio Valley China Co." This com- pany had been founded in 1889 and had for a time manufactured true porcelain of excellent quality in striking shapes and decorations, but it was forced to close, as it failed to make a commercial success. Its factory is nowknown as the "Riverside Depart- ment," and a fourth factory which has been estab- lished in Ohio, seven miles from Wheeling, as the "Avon Department" of the great company which is now called "The Wheeling Potteries Co.," and is one of the largest potteries in the United States. They make a full line of semi-porcelain ware, most of which is decorated; and a quantity of sanitary ware and plumbers' supplies, much of which is shipped to foreign parts. They have also produced a bone china "Cameo ware," of a high grade, and an. under-glaze blue ware, known as "Royal La Belle Flow Blue."
The "Warwick China Co.," of Wheeling, was organized in 1887. Its products are plain and deco- rated semi-porcelain dinner, tea and toilet ware. This factory also makes a Royal blue ware, with a rich old Mazarine blue glaze.
Virginia, in 1906, ranked seventeenth in the United States and sixth among the Southern states in the value of her clay products. Their total value was $1,966,078. Almost all of this came from brick and draintile, especially common brick, her chief clay product. Her pottery amounted only to $11,721. She has deposits of kaolin and of fire clay, and good pottery clays are abundant around Fred- ericksburg. Virginia has some small potteries and produces earthenware in limited quantities, and also tobacco pipes.
POTTERY IN THE SOUTH. 705
North Carolina in 1906 ranked ninth in the South and twenty-sixth in the United States as a maker of clay products. Their total value was $1,184,338. Of this brick and tile sold for $1,170,568, and pottery for $11,770. She has a number of small potteries, whose principal product is said to be stoneware, but they seem not to have been well investigated. North Carolina has a large quality and variety of valuable clays that are very little worked. She has good fire clays and true kaolin in large quantities; also fine pipe clay. /
South Carolina's total clay products in 1906 yielded $830,481. As her valuable and varied clay resources are now very little cultivated, she ranks only thirtieth in the United States and twelfth in the South as a clay manufacturer. However, she ranks fifth in the United States as a seller of raw clay, and first as a seller of " paper" clay, and by these she adds $175,351 to her clay income. Her brick and tile amount to $805,212, and her pottery to $25,269. She has about thirteen small potteries which produce red earthenware and stoneware, and she has thirty-one brick-making establishments. She has a noted deposit of the finest white kaolin, that at present is mined chiefly to sell to wall-paper factories.
Georgia, in 1906, ranked thirteenth among the United States and third among the Southern states in the value of her clay products, which amounted in all to $2,400,624. Brick and tile made $2,380,367, pottery $20,257. She ranks second in the United States as a producer of paper-clay, which alone brought her $141,765. The most of her pottery is stoneware. She has about seventeen potteries. Many of these are primitive small plants that are most interesting, having been carried on from gen-
Vol. 10—45
706 AESTHETIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
eration to generation in local families, at intervals in winter, and between the making of crops in sum- mer, their output being peddled or traded about in wagons. The war-3 is made of local clay mixed with swamp mud, and roughly glazed with sand and ashes.
"The Southern Terra-Cotta Works," of Atlanta, are the largest pottery plant in the state. They were founded in 1871, just one year later than the Chicago firm, which was the first to manufacture terra cotta in the United States. Dr. Barber praises their red and buff terra cotta garden vases and statuary, and their mantels supported by female figures.
Florida, in 1906, ranked thirteenth among the Southern states, thirty-ninth in the United States, as a maker of clay products. The total value of these was $289,644, which practically all came from brick and tile. She has but one pottery recorded (in Pensacola), but has a number of brick and tile firms, that make brick, draintile, sewer pipe, etc. The Florida clays are most important. She is one of the few states producing ball clay. Of this she has a remarkable deposit, very extensive and free from impurities, and from ten to thirty feet in depth. It burns white, and differs Trom English ball clay in being more refractory, and somewhat more plastic. She also has deposits of pure kaolin, and various brick and pottery clays.
Alabama, in 1906, ranked twenty-first among the United States and seventh among the Southern states as a manufacturer of clay products. Their total value equalled $1,688,899. Of this brick and tile brought $1,650,903, pottery $37,996, the pottery being stoneware and red earthenware. Alabama was one of the first of the Southern states to have
POTTERY IN THE SOUTH. 707
her clay resources scientifically investigated. Dr. Heinrich Keis, who made the report, says: "In the wide range of the state's formations nearly all carry valuable clay deposits." She has about thirty small potteries, which produce a variety of jugs, jars and flower-pots. In Marion county they make tomb- stones of pottery.
Mississippi, in 1906, ranked, in the United States, twenty-ninth; among Southern states, eleventh, as a maker of clay products. Her total income from these was $851,080, of which pottery brought in $19,311. In 1907 she reported eleven potteries, nine stoneware, one draintile and one art pottery, and she had eighty-eight brick and tile makers. She is a large manufacturer of brick. Mississippi is rich in clays. Besides a great variety of brick and pot- tery and stoneware clays, she has large deposits of white pipe clay of great purity. The "New- comb Pottery," of New Orleans, owns clay beds near Biloxi, and uses these exclusively for its variety of fine pottery.
In Biloxi is the noted "George E. Ohr Pottery," or "Biloxi Art Pottery," "in some respects," says Dr. Barber, "one of the most interesting potteries of the United States." In a single small kiln, with- out assistance in the manifold labors of a potter, Mr. Ohr prepares his clay, turns his shapes, glazes and fires all his pieces, which range in size from a toy vase to pieces as tall as a man. Thus, and entirely by original methods and processes, he has produced a ware which has attracted the attention of the world of art. It is made of the ordinary tough clays of the neighborhood, burned at a low temperature. It is remarkable for its extreme thin- ness, almost equal to that of some Trenton Belleek, for the richness and beauty of some of its glazes,
708 ESTHETIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
and for the odd contorted shapes; ''twisted, crinkled domerations," Mr. Ohr calls them. He claims most merit for these queer shapes, but his simplest pieces are much the most pleasing.
Louisiana took rank in 1906 as twenty-eighth among the United States and tenth among the Southern states for her clay products. Their total value was $900,697, of which brick and tile brought $894,277. Although Louisiana has a large variety of pottery and brick clays, they seem to have been very little investigated and to await development. Common brick is her chief clay product. She has four potteries reported in 1905, all of them in New Orleans. Three manufacture red earthenware, flower-pots, etc., but the fourth is one of the most important art potteries in the United States.
The "Newcomb Pottery" is unique, not only in America, but, possibly, as an article in The Sketch Book declares, "unique in the world." In the first place, are its educational features; Newcomb Col- lege is the women's department of Tulane Univer- sity of Louisiana. Newcomb 's Art Department, under the direction of Mr. Ellsworth Woodward, of Boston, has been built up to be the most impor- tant art school in the South,* and one of the most important in America. The "Newcomb Pottery" was started by the college in 1896, at the suggestion of Mr. Woodward, to give a practical outlet, which the region about did not afford, to the advanced art training offered by the college. In a truly extraordi- nary way, under Mr. Woodward and Miss Mary Gr. Sheerer, of the Cincinnati Art School, the pottery has been developed and enlarged, until at present it carries on an extensive business all over the coun- try, having agencies in Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, etc. On the artistic side it has won a world-wide recognition, having taken medals at
POTTERY IX THE SOUTH. 709
Paris, Buffalo, Charleston and St. Louis Exposi- tions, and a gold medal at Jamestown, in 1907. All this, in view of its uncommercial character, of the fact that all the pieces are thrown or built up by hand, and decorated with the decorator's own origi- nal designs, that no two pieces are alike, and that all the decorators are college girls, who thus imme- diately turn their art school training into a practical, paying business, amid harmonious and beautiful surroundings, makes a set of circumstances hardly to be matched elsewhere. The ware is made from a number of different clays, mined near Biloxi, Mississippi. Most of the pieces have been turned on the wheel, after certain standard forms, or from the workers' own designs, by a veteran potter. The girls are being trained to throw their own pieces, and thus make them altogether individual. From the first the artists have been given all possible liberty in working out their own ideas, always sub- ject, however, to the final judgment of Mr. Wood- ward and Miss Sheerer. A number of the workers have won individual medals at international exhi- bitions. Modelling, incising, and under-glaze paint- ing are used, singly or together. At first there was a great diversity of color and process, but grad- ually a marked style has been evolved. The wet clay pieces are generally incised or flatly and simply modelled, and the prevailing colors are blues and greens used together, often with touches of yellow. The body is usually a warm cream color, though sometimes it is white. Many red clay shapes are thrown, however, and decorated with various beauti- ful opaque glazes — greens, blues, red, grey, and various bronzes, sometimes brilliant, but often dull of surface, and among them charming accidents of firing. Another unique feature of Newcomb pottery is the subject of its decorations. These are almost
710 AESTHETIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
exclusively conventionalized plant forms from the flora of the vicinity. Mr. Walter Ellsworth Gray, in an article in Brush and Pencil, says:
The statement will probably not be challenged that Newcomb pot- tery is the most strictly indigenous product of the fictile art in America. Other wares have their individuality, and their special beauties, but very many of them are in a sense a reflex of the art of the Orient or of the Old World. About Newcomb pottery there is scarcely a suggestion or hint of older and better known wares, and while one may safely predict for it wide popularity, and hence a successful future, one may also accord to it the honor of being one of the most notable contributions of the South to the art of America.
There have been in New Orleans two other quite important pottery ventures. The "New Orleans Art Pottery Co." was established in 1886 by Prof. Wm. Woodward, director of the Art Department of Tulane University, to give employment to the students of the free night and Saturday art classes held by Tulane. A stock company was formed and it was hoped to make the pottery self-supporting. But the company was too small for the undertaking, and after four or five years was forced to liquidate. The ware was a soft paste body, often modelled with high relief ornament, and covered with opaque majolica glazes — much of it large objects, designed for lawn and gallery decoration. It was effective and original, and promised well for a fine development.
About 1880 "The Louisiana Porcelain Works" were started by Messrs. Hernandez and Saloy, for the manufacture of French china by French work- men, out of French materials. They made a fine white porcelain, similar in quality to "Limoges," but only continued the business about ten years.
Texas, in 1906, was reported sixteenth among the United States and fifth among Southern states in the value of her clay products. These equalled, altogether, $1,969,598, of which brick and tile made
POTTEEY IN THE SOUTH. 711
$1,860,963, pottery $108,635. Texas has an abun- dance of clay material that is little worked, includ- ing valuable beds of kaolin and ball clay, recently discovered. There are a number of small potteries that produce principally stoneware, and some earth- enware, of local clays. Texas is a large manufac- turer of good common brick, and makes some excel- lent front brick, red, cream, buff, brown and mottled. ' ' The Athens Pottery Co. ' ' is the largest of the kind in Texas. It makes chiefly light buff stoneware, crocks, jugs, churns, and flower-pots. It is said to keep 100,000 jugs in stock.
Tennessee was, in 1906, twenty-second among the United States and eighth among Southern states as a clay manufacturer. Her total clay income was $1,724,623. Of this brick and tile brought $1,405,- 458, pottery, $214,768, and various clays sold as clay, $104,397. The pottery is stoneware, red earthenware, and drain and sewer pipe. Common brick is the principal clay product. Tennessee has very valuable clays of various kinds, ball clay, fire clays, stoneware, pottery, and brick clays of many sorts.
"The Nashville Art Pottery" was founded by Elizabeth J. Scoville, as an outcome of her studio for drawing and painting. In 1886 it was making of native clays a fine red ware with a good brown glaze in artistic shapes. In 1888 its beautifully col- ored "Goldstone" and "Pomegranate" wares were discovered. In 1889 the pottery was permanently closed.
Kentucky, in 1906, ranked eleventh in the United States, second among Southern states, as a maker of clay products. Her total was $2,592,423, of which $2,425,214 came from brick and tile, and $167,209 from pottery. Common brick is the chief clay prod- uct. Much front brick is also made, also paving
712 ESTHETIC LIFE OF THE SOUTH.
brick, fire brick, draintile, terra cotta and glazed tiles. Stoneware is the chief pottery product. She has fine white pipe clay in abundance, fire clays in inexhaustible quantity, excellent pottery clays, and all varieties and colors of brick clay. Her white potter's clay is used by the Cincinnati potteries. An excellent grade of pottery is made at Waco, from residual clays of the Panola shale. There are about twelve potteries in the western part of the state.
At Covington were established, in 1887, "The Cambridge Art Tile Works," to make enamelled and embossed tiles. The plant has been enlarged from year to year, for greatly increasing business, and produces, for interior decoration, a high grade of friezes, mouldings, mantel facings, panels, etc. Belief work, and also intaglio, are used, covered with clear, colored glazes, remarkably free from crazing. They also make a specialty of imitation mosaic work.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. — Barber, E. A.: The Pottery and Porcelain of the United States; Benjamin, Marcus: American Art Pottery; Frackel- ton, Susan Stuart: Our American Potteries — Newcomb College, in The Sketch Boole; Gray, Walter Ellsworth: Latter-day Development in American Pottery, in Brush and Pencil; Hutson, Ethel: Various articles in Brick and The Clay Worker; Middleton, Jefferson: Clay Working Industries of the United States, in United States Geological Survey Bulletin; Sargent, Irene: An Art Industry of the Bayous, in The Craftsman; United States Census Bureau Bulletin No. 62; Reports of the Geological Surveys of Georgia, South Carolina, Ala- bama and Mississippi; United States Geological Survey Bulletins Nos. 3, 213, 283 (Prof. Paper, No. 11); also letters and notes of Ellsworth Woodward, Director of the Art Department of Newcomb College, Sabina Wells, Director of the Charleston Art School, and Frank Haynes, of Chesapeake Pottery. Also a collection and illus- trations of the wares of the "New Orleans Art Pottery Company," owned by Prof. William Woodward.
MRS. JOHN E. FICKLEN,
New Orleans, La.
University of California
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