The Southern South

"The Southern South" by Albert Bushnell Hart is a book that reveals the knowledge and appreciation of Southern conditions. It is not to the purpose of this book to describe those numerous common traits which belong to people in all sections of the United States but to bring into relief some of the characteristics of the South which are not shared by the North. For it is certain that the physical and climatic conditions of the South are different from those of the North, and equally sure that as a community the South has certain temperamental peculiarities which affect its views of the world in general and also of its own problems. Slavery, which had a little permanent effect on the society or institutions of those parts of the North in which it existed up to the Revolution, was for two centuries a large factor in Southern life and has left many marks upon both white and negro races. The existence of a formerly servile race now ten million-strong still influences the whole development of the South.

Unlike the North, which ever since the Civil War has felt disposed to consider itself the characteristic United States, the South looks upon itself, and is looked upon by its neighbors, as a unit within a larger unit; as set apart by its traditions, its history, and its commercial interests. The ex-president of the Southern Confederacy a few years ago at a public meeting declared that he appeared «In a defense of our Southland.» A Southland there is, in the sense of a body of states which, while now yielding to none in loyalty to the Union and in participation in its great career, adhere together with such a sense of peculiar life and standards as is not to be found in any group of Northern communities except perhaps New England.