TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF
AMERICA’S NEW SOUTH
By
Zhang Yuanyuan
A Thesis
Submitted to the Graduate School and College of English
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
The Degree of Master of Arts
Under the Supervision of Professor Wang Enming
Shanghai International Studies University
May 2010
i
Acknowledgements
This thesis has been several months in the making. The list of those to whom I am
indebted is too long to provide here, since I have had more time to borrow ideas and
insights from more people. However, this thesis could not have been written without
the help of my supervisor, Professor Wang Enming. I am indebted to Professor Wang
for his encouragement of my interest in the subject of American New South. Aside
from this intellectual enlightenment, my sincere appreciation also goes to Professor
Wang, whose careful checking and correction has been such that all the mistakes I had
made in the original draft, were ferreted out and corrected one by one. It must have
been a strenuous job. During the process of writing, Professor Wang provided
penetrating and insightful criticisms and suggested possible avenues for revision.
Indeed, without Professor Wang’s help, this thesis would have turned out a totally
different one.
In the meantime, through the very two years of my study at SISU, I have
accumulated debts to all the professors and teachers, who have inspired me with their
illuminating and thought-provoking courses and lectures. I did learn a great deal from
them.
My heartfelt thanks also go to my fellow students Jiangjiang, Zhangyuan, Chen
Dongping, Song Xiaorang, among many others. Their unselfish help as well as
unaffected friendship has provided moral support for me to overcome obstacles and
difficulties in life.
At the conclusion of the thesis writing, I would like to take this opportunity to
thank those who have offered me behind-the-scenes support over so many years. In
particular, I want to register my deepest gratitude to my parents whose unconditional
love has made possible my present accomplishment.
ii
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Abstract
The American South has played an important part in the American national
experience. Throughout the course of American history, contemporary writers,
scholars and historians have generally recognized it as the region most different from
the remainder of the country. Meanwhile, as one of the central themes of the southern
history, the New South was considered a significant subject. Significant as the subject
is, the historical reassessment of the American New South remains far from complete
today, with a number of important issues still unanswered, at least not satisfactorily
enough. Furthermore, when it comes to the American Studies in China, scholarship in
the field of American history is quite inadequate in many areas, particularly on the
issue of the New South. The present thesis is an effort to address this inadequacy in
China, with the hope that more attention would be given to such an important issue.
To state specifically, the central arguments of this thesis are as follows: 1) The
emergence of the “New South” was out of the historical necessity. Along with the
withdrawal of last federal troops from southern states in 1877, the era of
Reconstruction accordingly came to a close. However, in the wake of the Civil War
and Reconstruction, the South was nearly reduced into a land of ruins. To make
matters worse, it’s impossible for southerners to bring back what they had lost.
Against this backdrop, they had to face up to the reality and accepted what Henry
Grady enthusiastically popularized, that is, the “New South”. 2) The ideology of
“White Supremacy” died hard. The sudden quickening of life in commerce and
investment in certain areas of the South had sometimes been taken to mark the
opening of a completely new era in the region’s history. Although the New South
developed by leaps and bounds, the South was still a region with a deep commitment
among its white citizens to the subordination of African Americans---a commitment
solidified in the 1890s and the early twentieth century when white southerners erected
a legal system of segregation (the “Jim Crow” laws). 3) In spite of the fact that the
strenuous efforts by “New South” advocates to advance industry and commerce in the
region had produced significant results in a few areas, the South on the whole
iv
remained what it had always been. The poverty still haunted the New South. For the
great majority of the people, both blacks and whites, the land and the seasons were
still the center of their lives as they had been for their fathers.
In the concluding part, the thesis argues that although the economic development
has displayed extraordinary momentum and all but kept in pace with that of the North,
the economic structure of southern society, emerging from the Reconstruction
decentralized, rural and agricultural, in essence, has been altered in no way. More
significantly, white southerners believe that every properly regulated society should
have superiors and subordinates, and thus they are constantly pushing the Negro
farther down until blacks are relegated to the lowest rung of the society. Due to these
factors, the New South creed does not materialize totally following the Reconstruction,
and also has no way in doing this in a short run. So the New South remains what it has
always been, at least ideologically unchanged.
Key Words: New South; economic fulfillment; one-party system; racial relations.
v
Contents
Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................... ii
...................................................................................................................... iii
Abstract ........................................................................................................................ iv
Contents........................................................................................................................ vi
Introduction ................................................................................................................... 7
Chapter 1 Origin of the “New South” ......................................................................... 13
1.1 Definition of the “New South” ....................................................................... 14
1.2 The Significance of the Proposition of the “New South” .............................. 16
Chapter 2 The Emergence of the New South .............................................................. 19
2.1 The South in the post- Reconstruction ........................................................... 19
2.2 The Manifestations of the New South ............................................................ 21
The New South on the Economic Front ........................................................ 21
The New South in the Political Reconstruction ............................................ 24
The New South in Racial Relationships........................................................ 30
Chapter 3 Is the New South “New”? ........................................................................... 36
3.1 The Burden of New South.............................................................................. 36
3.2 Its Implications on the Future Direction of the South .................................... 39
Chapter 4 Conclusions ................................................................................................ 43
Bibliography ................................................................................................................ 47
vi
Introduction
“The idea of the South, or more appropriately, the ideas of the South belong in
large part to the order of social myth. There are few areas of the modern world that
have bred a regional mythology so potent, so profuse and diverse, even so paradoxical,
as the American South.” (Billington 1969:1) In this case, it’s worthwhile to explore
further the complexity and diversity of the American South. In spite of this situation,
the South, particularly the New South, has not been sufficiently studied here in China,
the significance of this thesis is self-evident. With all this in mind, the present thesis
attempts to analyze the New South by examining both the myth the term created and
the reality it brought into being.
The Purpose of Study on the New South
When it comes to the topic of the South, discussions of the “New South” cannot
be avoided if American Southern history is to be completely understood. The term
“New South” has been variously defined as both a doctrine and a period of the time.
In either case, it is said to have been the means by which the South redefined or
“redeemed” its heritage. “The New South, in short, is purported to have brought with
it a multiple endowment: economic abundance, an equitable settlement of racial issue
and political redemption.”(Gaston 1970:17) By contrast, the mythic image of the Old
South---an idealized and romanticized picture of the antebellum South, for example,
conveys to mind an earlier time of southern strength, success and virtue. Against this
backdrop, several questions have been put forward. “Did the institutionalization of
Jim Crow, tenant farming and the crop-lien system give way to the new ideology of
industrialization, sectional reconciliation, and regional progress?” or “Did the New
South Creed materialize in the post-Reconstruction years?”…Apparently, in order to
achieve a better understanding of the New South, a further research on this issue is
indispensable.
Significance of the Study
7
The South, as part of the nation, has developed specific sectional characteristics.
Moreover, throughout the course of American history, contemporary writers and
historians have generally recognized it as the region most different from the
remainder of the country. There are a large number of studies on the American New
South both overseas and domestically. As one of the central themes of the American
national experience, the New South has been considered a significant subject in the
study of American history. Historians have debated whether the New South was very
different from the Old South and whether the planter elite still maintained political
and economic power in the post-Reconstruction. They have asked and attempted to
answer questions such as: What is the New South? What are the essential
characteristics of the New South?
As stated above, the significance of the study of this problem in American history
can never be overestimated. In spite of this, the historical reassessment of American
New South remains far from complete. “Scholars and historians in general have
tended to emphasize different aspects of the region’s uniqueness---economic
development, political practices, social structure and race relations---and few have
ever argued that any single interpretive key would unlock the door of this vast
storehouse of historical material.”(Grantham 1967:24) Under this circumstance, the
author of this thesis tries to provide a new perspective on the issue of the New South,
examining the myth and reality of the New South.
Literature Review
It’s well acknowledged that the South has been identified as a peculiar region, and
also attracted many historians to conduct researches and studies on it. After the Civil
War and Reconstruction, southerners had to rebuild their economy and develop a new
system of race relations and a labor system without slavery. For the most part, there
were lots of studies concerning the New South. Along with the propaganda of the
fervent New South boosters, the New South began to rebuild itself. As the old
plantation-slave system had been shattered, white southerners had nothing else to rely
8
on and had to seek other approaches to develop the South. Meanwhile, the
industrialization of the United States in 1865 affected the agrarian South. So the New
South as well started its course of being industrialized. The prosperous South in the
post-Reconstruction directed the intellectual focus on the eulogy of the New South.
The themes of prosperity and power were rapidly becoming the stock-in-trade of
writers on the South’s recent history. Guy Carleton Lee, in the preface to Philip
Alexander Bruce’s The Rise of the New South, found the “subject of the South since
the Civil War” to be an “inspiring one.” (Grantham 1967:25) Actually, in his part, the
years since the war offered such examples of heroic effort, such persistent struggle,
such triumphant results, that the historian found himself tending to an exaltation of the
mind.
In fact, the New South school of historians, of which Bruce was the first major
representative, had its origins in the promotional literature of the New South editors
and publicists of the 1880’s and 1890’s. During these years, the New South
propagandists flooded the nation with an insistent literature in which historians of our
generation find an astonishing mixture of fact and fancy, wish and reality. “Based on
this perspective, the New South school of historians developed, as the central theme
of their works, the concept of triumph over adversity, of steel will and impeccable
character overcoming staggering problems, often against what seemed impossible
odds.”(ibid.) Moreover, they were fervent in depicting a South innocent of racial
injustice. So the South in most of these early histories rose from the extraordinary
devastation of the Reconstruction to a glorious plateau of achievement.
However, the prosperity and harmony arising from the industrial movement
merely existed in the surface of the Southern life. No one doubted that Jim Crow was
firmly entrenched by around 1900, and a good survey was C. Vann Woodward’s
Strange Career of Jim Crow. It contributed to an understanding why and when Jim
Crow was imposed. “The bitter violence and blood-letting recriminations of the
campaigns between white conservatives and white radicals in the 'nineties had opened
wounds that could not be healed by ordinary political nostrums and free-silver slogans,
and the only formula powerful enough to accomplish that was the magical formula of
9
white supremacy, applied without stint and without any of the old conservative
reservations of paternalism, without deference to any lingering resistance of Northern
liberalism, or any fear of further check from a defunct Southern Populism."
(Woodward 1955:82-83) In this sense, the New South did not embody the total
“newness”, and at least racial relations were not improved. So historians had started to
debate whether the New South was very different from the Old South and whether the
planter elite maintained their power after the Civil War. “Professor Woodward,
building on the new monographs and his own extensive research, published his
Origins of the New South. He contended that the Redeemers were “new men” who
rejected agrarianism in favor of economic diversification. That view had been
challenged or modified by a number of historians afterwards.”(Cooper 1990:776)
“Nonetheless, it was the first general history of the Post-Reconstruction South since
Holland Thompson’s brief volume of 1919 and the first detailed study since Bruce’s
work of 1905. Resemblances between the new and older works were difficult to find.
Not only, of course, had Woodward written from a different perspective, but his
skeptical, ironic approach to the materials was in direct contrast to the relatively
uncomplicated and uncritical studies of the New South school. The results were
generally devastating to the old tradition. The South, Woodward concluded, was
limited largely to the role of a producer of raw materials, a tributary of industrial
powers, and an economy dominated by absentee landowners. The unhappy result was
low wages, lack of opportunity, and poverty.”Grantham 1967:33)
Relatively speaking, scholarship in the field of American history is quite weak in
China, particularly in the area of the Southern region in the post-Reconstruction era.
Furthermore, with regard to the issues of American South, academic attention has
been heavily poured on racial relations and the plantation-based slavery system of the
South before the Civil War. So there has been a lack of concern for study of the New
South. The main reason lies in that scholars in China tend to attach more importance
to contemporary history, particularly the 20th century American history and thus the
research of history is paid insufficient attention. Besides, the differences of academic
10
interests and intellectual traditions between two countries also lead to imbalances of
research. Against this background, it’s within our expectation that little academic
attention has been given to the study of the American New South. In this case, our
understanding of the post-bellum South is inadequate, and even partial to some extent.
So the present study is an effort to address such inadequacy in the study of the New
South issue in China, with the hope that more intellectual attention would be drawn to
such an important yet long ignored issue.
Research Methodology
The self-conscious intensity of regional mythology is the most visible in the South.
It was in the South that conflict with national mythologies became real. “In the South,
the existence of the “peculiar institution” of slavery provided an obvious and
important difference, around which Southern identity was made explicit. Around
slavery, other institutions and characteristics were defined as peculiarly Southern: the
plantation, an aristocratic vision, the recognized dominance of an elite, and the ideal
of a cash crop.”(Robertson 1980:83) However, the breakout of the Civil War and the
following Reconstruction dealt a heavy blow to this peculiar land. Devoid of support
from slavery and at the same time exposed to the industrial movement after the 1865,
white southerners were met with a thorny matter---how to tackle the relationship
between the New South and the other part of the country. Historians have debated
whether the New South was entirely changed and whether the planter elite maintained
political and economic power after the Reconstruction. Therefore, it’s of great
importance to carry out researches concerning the New South. This thesis is an
attempt to delve into historical significance of the New South from a historical
dimension. Chapter One concentrates on the origin of the “New South” and the
significance of its proposition.
Chapter Two aims at displaying a general examination of the South in the
post-Reconstruction. Through the demonstration of different aspects, such as
economic boom, one-party system, and “harmonious” racial relations and so forth, the
South after the Reconstruction was actually an embodiment of progress, upward
11
mobility. Apart from the great development of the New South, at the same time, some
limitations were still in existence, which retarded the great development of the New
South. In Chapter Three, the author gives a specific description of the burden of New
South. In essence, the economic structure of southern society that had emerged from
the Civil War---decentralized and agrarian, had never been altered in a short run. With
the factory came into the city, both of them slowly remolding the rural South as they
have been remaking American civilization in general. By the time the First World
War broke out in Europe, the American South had been “northernized” to a degree
only hoped for by the most ambitious of Reconstructionists. Moreover, this was
permanent change, for the northern industrial way had been voluntarily accepted by
the South. And in the future, the region would be pulled once again into the main
current of American life.
The thesis attempts to demonstrate the transformation---from the ante-bellum
South to the New South, was of great significance. Slavery was destroyed, and
plantation was gone. At the end of the nineteen century, technological advancement
brought southerners into contact with the reminder of the nation. These factors
actually made the materialization of the New South possible. Yet at the same time, as
southerners still sank in nostalgia and took pride in their Lost Cause, the future of the
New South were unavoidably filled with hardships and obstacles.
12
Chapter 1 Origin of the “New South”
The South had been recognized as a distinctive region of the United States since
the early days of the Republic. It didn’t count at all when the political, economic,
societal, and attitudinal differences between the South and the reminder of the nation
began. However, by 1861, these differences became especially conspicuous and when
they got inextricably associated, they played a significant role in bringing forth a
bloody conflict between North and South. Although the Civil War combined the
Union together, the impact of the war and the Reconstruction era sustained sectional
feelings, particularly in the former Confederate states. Exactly speaking, the whole
South in the postwar and after the Reconstruction, was crushed and wretched. The
planting aristocracy had lost heavily in wealth and political influence. Many had to
make new starts in life for which little in the past experience had given preparation.
Slavery had been eliminated totally, which originally in the ante-bellum South, was a
way to restrict blacks’ freedom and their civil rights. For the African Americans, the
Civil War and Reconstruction meant different. The elimination of slavery was, at least,
a small but important first step to make Africans obtain their freedom, even though
afterwards southerners invented new approaches to limit their rights.
By contrast, faced with the ruinous disaster, southerners were unadjusted and even
at a loss. When northern attempts to reconcile the South with the Union, southerners
were unreconciled and took no heed of their endeavors. Instead they led to a sharp
reaction against the victorious North, for southerners always regarded themselves as
distinctive from the rest of the country and they would never leave humiliation and
shame behind, resulting from the Civil War and Reconstruction. For their part, even
though they were defeated in the battlefield, they still took pride in their myth of an
idealized ante-bellum civilization. And this was just the very way that southerners of
the Civil War generation and their children viewed the war and dealt with crushing
defeat, and it was the means they opted to convey their understanding to succeeding
generations. Therefore, the glorification of the war, economic doldrums, and the
13
determination to maintain white supremacy by saddling the freed Negro with
second-class status kept alive in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
However, this was not to say that the South was always of one mind or that its
beliefs about itself and the rest of the nation were without dissenting voices. The
technological revolution not only affected the whole nation, but also furnished a
possibility of removing the legacies of the past and nudging the South into the
mainstream of American life. Due to its effects, southerners and northerners were
brought together face to face and the result was direct communication, and in some
cases understanding or misunderstanding, for the first time. Along with the rest of the
country, the South was actually profoundly affected by the processes of urbanization,
industrialization, and social changes. Based on the above-mentioned factors, what the
Old South ever pursued was in conflict with the South now affected by new forces.
Under this circumstance, one couldn’t help asking such questions: Would the New
South emerge? If so, what was the New South? Had southerners outgrown the
animosities of war? Was the cotton kingdom about to give way to a new industrial era?
Could black and white citizens live in harmony? Had political and social leadership
changed so drastically that such a transformation from antebellum traditions was
possible? In short, was there really a “new” South? Or, in what ways, did South
become “new”?
1.1 Definition of the “New South”
As a concept, the New South came out in the wake of the Civil War and
Reconstruction. After the defeat of the South, particularly as a result of the
humiliating experience of Reconstruction, the South was devastated in terms of
population, infrastructure and economy. Many white Southerners considered it a
vicious and destructive experience---a time when vindictive Northerners enforced
humiliation and revenge on the prostrate South and unnecessarily delayed a genuine
reunion of the sections. To a certain extent, the Civil War had reduced the ante-bellum
South into ruins and thus southerners had nothing to rely on. In the meantime, they
were deeply conscious that it’s impossible for them to bring back what they had lost.
14
They had to face up to the reality and sought ways to build what they had lost. If
otherwise, their situations would become worse. At this crucial moment, a few
distinguished southern newspaper editors, and industrialists insisted that southerners
should not look back to the plantation life and must free themselves from that
nostalgia and create a thriving, booming south. Equally important, they were fearful
that the South would become an economic backwater, lagging behind the rest of the
country. So they enthusiastically popularized the “New South” to encourage southern
industrialization. They argued that abundant natural resources and cheap labor would
be conducive to the industrial development in the South. What’s more, the New South
creed became so much a part of the South after 1865 and it was a simple set of beliefs
with a powerful shaping force. The core basis of the creed was ideas of the economic
regeneration, national reconciliation and adjustment of the race question. During the
1880s the movement to industrialize the South gained momentum.
Why did the creed thereafter find its way throughout the South so rapidly? One of
its reasons lay in that it had its apostles. “In fact, several of the most well-known were
distinguished journalists, among whom was Henry Grady, editor of the Atlanta
Constitution. Grady used the Constitution to pronounce and propagate the New South
creed. The region, he claimed, had kept its faith with the North by accepting defeat
and pledging allegiance to the Union, and it should be ready to forget the
unpleasantness and embrace the modern industrial spirit. What he expounded at that
time fitted the national mood and seemed to meet the needs of the South. Americans
wanted reconciliation and were eager to put the Civil War and Reconstruction behind
them. Grady spoke to these desires. He also carefully avoided divisive sectional issues,
except for race relations. He anticipated that blacks would continue to improve their
lot, but they must do so under the tutelage of those among whom their lot is cast. At
the same time, he warned against intervention in southern race relations from outside
the region. Not only Grady but most southerners believed race relations in the South
were strictly a southern affair, beyond either the duty or the capacity of the federal
government to alter or influence.” (Cooper 1990: 429-431)
15
For Henry W. Grady, the proposition of the New South meant laying aside
sectional animosities, shaping an industrial economy, and leaving Southern whites
and blacks to work out their relationship by themselves. “According to Grady’s
enthusiastic propaganda, in the legend of the New South, the Old South was supposed
to have been destroyed by the Civil War and the thirty years that followed it, to have
been swept both socially and mentally into the limbo of things that were and are not,
to give place to a society which has been rapidly and increasingly industrialized and
modernized both in body and in mind---which now, indeed, save for a few quaint and
survivals and gentle sentimentalities and a few shocking and inexplicable brutalities
such as lynching, is almost as industrialized and modernized in its outlook as the
North.”(Cooper 1990:432) More importantly, people nearly everywhere in the United
States witnessed and most experienced the economic boom of the late nineteenth
century. The surge of growth was so powerful in the 1880s that even the
sober-minded got dazzled.
1.2 The Significance of the Proposition of the “New South”
To some extent, the proposition of the “New South” embodied the new ideology
of the industrialization, sectional reconciliation, and regional progress, suiting the
predominant American mentality of the day---materialism. Therefore, many
supporters were attracted to the Grady’s compelling vision of a New South. In the
aftermath of the Civil War, they preached with evangelical fervor the gospel of
industrial development. From their perspective, the Confederacy had lost the war
because it had depended too much on King Cotton and in the future the South must
follow the North’s example and industrialize. In other words, the New South creed
that Henry Grady advocated corresponded to the needs of some southerners who were
to develop a diversified and efficient agriculture in order to further economic growth,
and at the same time, it pointed the way forward for southerners who were eager to
leave behind the failure of Civil War and humiliation of Reconstruction but had no
idea in finding the way out of the predicament.
16