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By Henry W. Grady After the Civil War was over, many progressive Southerners began to envision a "New South". They hoped that, with an infusion of Northern capital, the South could recreate itself in Northern fashion, with industrialization, free labor and a booming economy. In this excerpt from a speech given to the New England Society on December 21, 1886, Grady, an Atlanta editor and leading propagandist for the New South, argues that the vision has essentially been realized. But have we kept faith with you? In the fullest sense, yes. When Lee surrendered-I don't say when Johnson [sic] surrendered, because I understand he still alludes to the time when he met General Sherman last as the time when he determined to abandon any further prosecution of the struggle-when Lee surrendered, I say, and Johnson [sic] quit, the South became, and has since been, loyal to this Union. We fought hard enough to know that we were whipped, and in perfect frankness accept as final the arbitrament of the sword to which we had appealed. The South found her jewel in the toad's head of defeat. The shackles that had held her in narrow limitations fell forever when the shackles of the negro slave were broken. Under the old regime the negroes were slaves to the South; the South was a slave to the system. The old plantation, with its simple police regulations and feudal habit, was the only type possible under slavery. Thus was gathered in the hands of a splendid and chivalric oligarchy the substance that should have been diffused among the people, as the rich blood, under certain artificial conditions, is gathered at the heart, filling that with affluent rapture but leaving the body chill and colorless. The old South rested everything on slavery and agriculture, unconscious that these could neither give nor maintain healthy growth. The new South presents a perfect democracy, the oligarchs leading in the popular movement-a social system compact and closely knitted, less splendid on the surface, but stronger at the core-a hundred farms for every plantation, fifty homes for every palace-and a diversified industry that meets the complex need of this complex age. The new South is enamored of her new work. Her soul is stirred with the breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling fair on her face. She is thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and prosperity. As she stands upright, full-statured and equal among the people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon the expanded horizon, she understands that her emancipation came because through the inscrutable wisdom of God her honest purpose was crossed, and her brave armies were beaten... |
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