- Jul 23, 2018
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“White folks you can have your automobiles, paved streets and lights. You can have your buses, and street cars, and hot pavement and tall buildings cause I aint got no use for em no way. I tell you what I do want--I want my old cotton bed and the moonlight shining through the willow trees, and the cool grass under my feet while I run around catching lightening bugs. I want to feel the sway of the old wagon, going down the red, dusty road, and listening to the wheels groaning as they roll along. I want to sink my teeth into that old ash cake. White folks, I want to see the boats passing up and down the Alabammy river and hear the slaves singing at their work. I want to see dawn break over the black ridge and the twilight settle over the place spreading an orange hue. I want to walk the paths through the woods and see the rabbits and the birds and the frogs at night. But they took me away from that a long time ago... Maybe someday I'll get to go home. They tell me that when a person crosses over that river, the Lord gives him what he wants. I don told the Lord I don't want nothing much---only my home, white folks. I don't think that's much to ask for. I suppose he'll send me back there. I been waiting a long time for him to call.”
- Clara Davis Alabama Slave Narratives
“The south is a garden. It has been worn out by the War, Reconstruction, the Period of Desolation, the Depression and the worst ravages of all—Modernity; yet, a worn-out garden, its contours perceived by keen eyes, the fruitfulness of its past stored in memory, can be over time, a time which will last no longer than those of us who initially set our minds to the task, restored, to once again produce, for the time appointed unto it, the fruits which nurture the human spirit and which foreshadow the Garden of which there will be no end.
— Dr. Robert M. Peters of Louisiana
“God could have worked his plan throw builders of ancient Egypt or the scientists of Babylon or merchants and tradesmen, Instead he chose the tribe of Jacob, who traveled with their sheep and cattle. He brought their descendants to farmland and gave them agricultural laws.”
-Joel Salatin the Glorious Piggness of pigs
In 1860 many in the north would agree with the southern agrarians as this had been the dominate American view. Thoe less than the south many northerners were fully agrarian and anti-industrial. The northern industrialist view is aimed at a relative few, but influancial, rich, industrialist, politicians and politicians educators from the north, that imposed themselves on the south as well as the north. The southern agrarian view was not against profit but certain philosophies forced on them from the northern industrialist. The south, the land of cotton, with its agrarian ways, was very much at odds with northern industry and conformity of the time. Maintaining Slavery of course played a part in this but was only one aspect. Only 4.8% of white southerners owned slaves. Slavery did allow agrarian life to compete with industrialization and even surpass it financially.
“Slavery . . . was part of the agrarian system but only one element and not an essential one...The fundamental and passionate ideal for which the south stood and fell was the ideal of an agrarian society”
-Frank Owsley Historian 1930
What The Old South Stood for- The American Founders View
“Ours is an agricultural people, and God grant that we may continue so. We never want to see it otherwise. It is the freest, happiest, most independent , and, with us, the most powerful condition on earth.”
-Montgomery Daily Confederation 1858
“The union became a synonym for “modern” and a really counterpart to the south”
-David Goldfeild War is good for Business Americas civil war Magazine
“For hundreds of years prior to the industrial revolution, families were self-reliant, integrated units of efficient production. This historical model of family-based production is referred to as the family economy. In a properly functioning family economy, every member of the family—father, mother, children, grandparents, and any extended family living under the same roof—plays a role in making the family as self-sufficient as possible. Everyone works for the good of the family. Everyone is needed. This model is naturally suited to farming and homesteading. It was the norm in agrarian America prior to the mid-1800s. Within the family economy, mothers and fathers taught their children the many different skills associated with their way of life. The whole idea was to train children to be productive members of the family as children so they would become productive, self-reliant leaders (and teachers) of their own families one day. The virtues of thrift, hard work, family closeness, and religious faith, were integral elements of these families of yore and produced men and women of great character. The primary objective of the family economy was not to make a lot of money. It was to sustain a way of life. Indeed, most farming was subsistence farming, which means the family produced just about everything they needed, bartered for what they did not have, and did not require a lot of money.”
-The southern Agrarian
“The southern creed.... that an agrarian life cultivated the virtues necessary for Independence but an urban, industrial life cultivated vices which led to dependence.”
-From Founding Fathers to Fire Eaters: The Constitutional Doctrine of States' Rights in the Old South 2018 by James Rutledge Roesch
From the time of the founders to the 1820's both in the north and south, from all political persuasions, agreed that the agrarian way of life was best for man and liberty to be his own ruler and free. A man who was his own boss and self sufficient , was independent, free thinking, self reliant, and a liberty minded people that govern themselves and will not be easily be enslaved by the government. Virginian John Taylor argued “unpressed and predominate agricultural population was the only possible permanent basis for free government”
“From Jefferson many of the southern populist learned the importance of a rural community of yeoman farmers only these enjoyed sufficient moral virtue to guarantee the consonance of the American republic”
-Bruce Palmer Man over Money The Southern Populist Critique of American Capitalism University of North Carolina Press
Early Americans “Celebrated the countryside, preferring a society of farmers and merchants organized around villages and towns to a society based on manufacturing industries organized around cities” agrarian life propagated “a due sense of Independence, liberty and justice.” The founders saw the European cities as cities “produced vast poor turned into mobs bent on the destruction of liberty”
-Robert William Fogel The Rise and Fall of American Slavery
Thomas Jefferson in his notes on Virginia said “those who labor the earth are the chosen people of God” another southerner called agriculture “The art of all arts, science of all sciences, and the life of all life.” One Southern newspaper warned its readers to “stay in the country” and “be free to think and act.” There views were “of an old American tradition, one that we find imbeded in American thought almost from the earliest days.” Jefferson believed farmers were independent unlike city dwellers. Urbanization would lead to conformity and dependency. Southerners generally disliked the nervous life of cities, they were defenders of the small town farming and plantation community. The south liked their old tradition's and wished to keep to them. The south was following the dominate Jeffersonian Agrarian view that represented conservative, rural, middle class America.
“Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds. As long, therefore, as they can find employment in this line, I would not convert them into mariners, artisans, or anything else.”
–Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1785
“Only a government comprised of a free holding yeomanry and gentry [in other words landowners] was responsible enough to rule.”
-From Founding Fathers to Fire Eaters: The Constitutional Doctrine of States' Rights in the Old South 2018by James Rutledge Roesch
“For Jefferson....farming was nothing short of a noble calling.”
-Frank Levering Welcome the the Country Things you need to know when moving to rural Virginia
Its natural enemies were seen as urbanization and industrialization. This is in part why America lagged behind England a half century in the industrial revolution.
“Their rural background and their Jeffersonian-Jacksonian heritage, meant that southern populists invariably considered farmers the most important group in society”
-Bruce Palmer Man over Money
“In cities and factories, the vices of our nature are more fully displayed” and “Agrarian life promotes a generous hospitality, a high and perfect courtesy, a lofty spirit of independence...and all the nobler virtues and heroic traits”
-James Hammond 1842 South Carolina
“The camaraderie and deep personal friendships created a seamless social fabric within the agrarian community. There was a depth of interaction and interdependence that is increasingly hard to maintain in a techno world”
-Joel Salatin The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer
“Agriculture was their favorite and natural pursuit”
-E Merton Coulter The confederate States of America A History of the South
“Ownership of land beget Independence, Independence begets virtue, and virtue begets republican liberty.”
-Historian Forest McDonald the intellectual origins of the Constitution.
By 1830 two separate cultures were emerging in America. The south was about individualism and freedom from interference by the government. The north had a growing central government at the cost of individuality. The south disliked the northern urbanization, industrialization, centralization in politics and society and wished to defend “Individualism against trend of baseless conformity in an increasing mechanized and dehumanized society.” They were farmers who loved the soil and land believing industry and “progress” was harmful to the society and to nature. Believing family, religion [where the church was central to the community] , small town community, individualism, and responsibility of raising children right, was more important than material wealth and “progress.” One Virginian who traveled to NYC in 1855 said it was a
“World of modern people and modern things...transported from the time of George the third to the largest hotel on Broadway in 1855. All was as strange to us then as we are now to the Chinese.”
-Letitia M Burwell A Girls life in Virginia Before the war 1895 reprint sprinkle publishing Harrisonberg Virginia 2001
“Simplicity brings freedom”
-Matthew Dickerson and Jonathan Evans Ents, Elves, and Eriador the Environmental Vision of J.R.R Tolkien Kentucky University press 2006
“1850's southern agrarians had mounted a counter attack against the gospel of industrialization...The south created a cultural climate unfriendly to industrialization ”
-James McPherson Battle cry of freedom
“The industrial mindset destroys diversity and pushes everything towards standardization”
-Joel Salatin You Can Farm
In reaction to the drastic changes in the north the south dug in deeper on Jeffersonian agrarianism, they “wanted to turn back the clock largely based on their bible belt mentality.” While the south maintained its % of farmers, the northern percentage of farmers dropped 30% since the founding of the union. One English observer of the time said southerners believed labor should be confined to agriculture wishing to leave the manufactures to Europe and the north. In doing so, unlike the north, the south maintained the American founders Jeffersonian Agrarian society.
“The north changed radically after the founders of the united states, especially in the 1850's”
-Dr. Clyde Wilson Professor of History University of South Carolina
“The South's concept of republicanism had not changed in three-quarters of a century; the North's had. With complete sincerity the South fought to preserve its version of the republic of the Founding Fathers--a government of limited powers that protected the rights of property, including slave property, and whose constituency comprised an independent gentry and yeomanry of the white race undisturbed by large cities, heartless factories, restless free workers, and class conflict."
-James M. McPherson "Ante-bellum Southern Exceptionalism:
“little dynamic change, weather through immigration, the growth of new cities or new industrial manufacturing, was allowed to come in and stir up the pot.”
-Kevin Morrow The Civil war
Even the industry in the south was almost universally started by, and run by, northerners. Recent migrants from the north who went south to start new businesses.
“The railroads enterprises, the banks, and the corporations are founded and devised by them” [new englanders]
-Roger Burlingame March of the Iron men a Social History of Union
- Clara Davis Alabama Slave Narratives
“The south is a garden. It has been worn out by the War, Reconstruction, the Period of Desolation, the Depression and the worst ravages of all—Modernity; yet, a worn-out garden, its contours perceived by keen eyes, the fruitfulness of its past stored in memory, can be over time, a time which will last no longer than those of us who initially set our minds to the task, restored, to once again produce, for the time appointed unto it, the fruits which nurture the human spirit and which foreshadow the Garden of which there will be no end.
— Dr. Robert M. Peters of Louisiana
“God could have worked his plan throw builders of ancient Egypt or the scientists of Babylon or merchants and tradesmen, Instead he chose the tribe of Jacob, who traveled with their sheep and cattle. He brought their descendants to farmland and gave them agricultural laws.”
-Joel Salatin the Glorious Piggness of pigs
In 1860 many in the north would agree with the southern agrarians as this had been the dominate American view. Thoe less than the south many northerners were fully agrarian and anti-industrial. The northern industrialist view is aimed at a relative few, but influancial, rich, industrialist, politicians and politicians educators from the north, that imposed themselves on the south as well as the north. The southern agrarian view was not against profit but certain philosophies forced on them from the northern industrialist. The south, the land of cotton, with its agrarian ways, was very much at odds with northern industry and conformity of the time. Maintaining Slavery of course played a part in this but was only one aspect. Only 4.8% of white southerners owned slaves. Slavery did allow agrarian life to compete with industrialization and even surpass it financially.
“Slavery . . . was part of the agrarian system but only one element and not an essential one...The fundamental and passionate ideal for which the south stood and fell was the ideal of an agrarian society”
-Frank Owsley Historian 1930
What The Old South Stood for- The American Founders View
“Ours is an agricultural people, and God grant that we may continue so. We never want to see it otherwise. It is the freest, happiest, most independent , and, with us, the most powerful condition on earth.”
-Montgomery Daily Confederation 1858
“The union became a synonym for “modern” and a really counterpart to the south”
-David Goldfeild War is good for Business Americas civil war Magazine
“For hundreds of years prior to the industrial revolution, families were self-reliant, integrated units of efficient production. This historical model of family-based production is referred to as the family economy. In a properly functioning family economy, every member of the family—father, mother, children, grandparents, and any extended family living under the same roof—plays a role in making the family as self-sufficient as possible. Everyone works for the good of the family. Everyone is needed. This model is naturally suited to farming and homesteading. It was the norm in agrarian America prior to the mid-1800s. Within the family economy, mothers and fathers taught their children the many different skills associated with their way of life. The whole idea was to train children to be productive members of the family as children so they would become productive, self-reliant leaders (and teachers) of their own families one day. The virtues of thrift, hard work, family closeness, and religious faith, were integral elements of these families of yore and produced men and women of great character. The primary objective of the family economy was not to make a lot of money. It was to sustain a way of life. Indeed, most farming was subsistence farming, which means the family produced just about everything they needed, bartered for what they did not have, and did not require a lot of money.”
-The southern Agrarian
“The southern creed.... that an agrarian life cultivated the virtues necessary for Independence but an urban, industrial life cultivated vices which led to dependence.”
-From Founding Fathers to Fire Eaters: The Constitutional Doctrine of States' Rights in the Old South 2018 by James Rutledge Roesch
From the time of the founders to the 1820's both in the north and south, from all political persuasions, agreed that the agrarian way of life was best for man and liberty to be his own ruler and free. A man who was his own boss and self sufficient , was independent, free thinking, self reliant, and a liberty minded people that govern themselves and will not be easily be enslaved by the government. Virginian John Taylor argued “unpressed and predominate agricultural population was the only possible permanent basis for free government”
“From Jefferson many of the southern populist learned the importance of a rural community of yeoman farmers only these enjoyed sufficient moral virtue to guarantee the consonance of the American republic”
-Bruce Palmer Man over Money The Southern Populist Critique of American Capitalism University of North Carolina Press
Early Americans “Celebrated the countryside, preferring a society of farmers and merchants organized around villages and towns to a society based on manufacturing industries organized around cities” agrarian life propagated “a due sense of Independence, liberty and justice.” The founders saw the European cities as cities “produced vast poor turned into mobs bent on the destruction of liberty”
-Robert William Fogel The Rise and Fall of American Slavery
Thomas Jefferson in his notes on Virginia said “those who labor the earth are the chosen people of God” another southerner called agriculture “The art of all arts, science of all sciences, and the life of all life.” One Southern newspaper warned its readers to “stay in the country” and “be free to think and act.” There views were “of an old American tradition, one that we find imbeded in American thought almost from the earliest days.” Jefferson believed farmers were independent unlike city dwellers. Urbanization would lead to conformity and dependency. Southerners generally disliked the nervous life of cities, they were defenders of the small town farming and plantation community. The south liked their old tradition's and wished to keep to them. The south was following the dominate Jeffersonian Agrarian view that represented conservative, rural, middle class America.
“Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds. As long, therefore, as they can find employment in this line, I would not convert them into mariners, artisans, or anything else.”
–Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1785
“Only a government comprised of a free holding yeomanry and gentry [in other words landowners] was responsible enough to rule.”
-From Founding Fathers to Fire Eaters: The Constitutional Doctrine of States' Rights in the Old South 2018by James Rutledge Roesch
“For Jefferson....farming was nothing short of a noble calling.”
-Frank Levering Welcome the the Country Things you need to know when moving to rural Virginia
Its natural enemies were seen as urbanization and industrialization. This is in part why America lagged behind England a half century in the industrial revolution.
“Their rural background and their Jeffersonian-Jacksonian heritage, meant that southern populists invariably considered farmers the most important group in society”
-Bruce Palmer Man over Money
“In cities and factories, the vices of our nature are more fully displayed” and “Agrarian life promotes a generous hospitality, a high and perfect courtesy, a lofty spirit of independence...and all the nobler virtues and heroic traits”
-James Hammond 1842 South Carolina
“The camaraderie and deep personal friendships created a seamless social fabric within the agrarian community. There was a depth of interaction and interdependence that is increasingly hard to maintain in a techno world”
-Joel Salatin The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer
“Agriculture was their favorite and natural pursuit”
-E Merton Coulter The confederate States of America A History of the South
“Ownership of land beget Independence, Independence begets virtue, and virtue begets republican liberty.”
-Historian Forest McDonald the intellectual origins of the Constitution.
By 1830 two separate cultures were emerging in America. The south was about individualism and freedom from interference by the government. The north had a growing central government at the cost of individuality. The south disliked the northern urbanization, industrialization, centralization in politics and society and wished to defend “Individualism against trend of baseless conformity in an increasing mechanized and dehumanized society.” They were farmers who loved the soil and land believing industry and “progress” was harmful to the society and to nature. Believing family, religion [where the church was central to the community] , small town community, individualism, and responsibility of raising children right, was more important than material wealth and “progress.” One Virginian who traveled to NYC in 1855 said it was a
“World of modern people and modern things...transported from the time of George the third to the largest hotel on Broadway in 1855. All was as strange to us then as we are now to the Chinese.”
-Letitia M Burwell A Girls life in Virginia Before the war 1895 reprint sprinkle publishing Harrisonberg Virginia 2001
“Simplicity brings freedom”
-Matthew Dickerson and Jonathan Evans Ents, Elves, and Eriador the Environmental Vision of J.R.R Tolkien Kentucky University press 2006
“1850's southern agrarians had mounted a counter attack against the gospel of industrialization...The south created a cultural climate unfriendly to industrialization ”
-James McPherson Battle cry of freedom
“The industrial mindset destroys diversity and pushes everything towards standardization”
-Joel Salatin You Can Farm
In reaction to the drastic changes in the north the south dug in deeper on Jeffersonian agrarianism, they “wanted to turn back the clock largely based on their bible belt mentality.” While the south maintained its % of farmers, the northern percentage of farmers dropped 30% since the founding of the union. One English observer of the time said southerners believed labor should be confined to agriculture wishing to leave the manufactures to Europe and the north. In doing so, unlike the north, the south maintained the American founders Jeffersonian Agrarian society.
“The north changed radically after the founders of the united states, especially in the 1850's”
-Dr. Clyde Wilson Professor of History University of South Carolina
“The South's concept of republicanism had not changed in three-quarters of a century; the North's had. With complete sincerity the South fought to preserve its version of the republic of the Founding Fathers--a government of limited powers that protected the rights of property, including slave property, and whose constituency comprised an independent gentry and yeomanry of the white race undisturbed by large cities, heartless factories, restless free workers, and class conflict."
-James M. McPherson "Ante-bellum Southern Exceptionalism:
“little dynamic change, weather through immigration, the growth of new cities or new industrial manufacturing, was allowed to come in and stir up the pot.”
-Kevin Morrow The Civil war
Even the industry in the south was almost universally started by, and run by, northerners. Recent migrants from the north who went south to start new businesses.
“The railroads enterprises, the banks, and the corporations are founded and devised by them” [new englanders]
-Roger Burlingame March of the Iron men a Social History of Union