The

South Atlantic Quarterly.

The Reign of Passion

In a certain Southern State a political party recently held a convention of delegates from all parts of the State. It was an important meeting, the design of which was to commit the party to a decided line of conduct. The convention was largely attended and it was a representative gathering of American citizens. Those who were present were performing not only an innocent and a legal, but a beneficial, act of citizenship. They were performing in a natural way a function of public life which the constitution has made possible and which long usage has made a natural feature of citizenship. Their meeting was the expression of certain political principles which may have seemed inexpedient to some people, but the correctness of whose form of expression has not been questioned. It ought not to be too much to say that such an act should have had not only the tolerance, but the friendly approval, of every fair-minded American.

Near the town in which the above mentioned convention was held there is published a certain prominent newspaper. It is a widely-read journal and may be considered the authorized organ of the dominant political party in the said State. It belongs to the opposite party to that which held this convention. Its report of the proceedings of this convention is now before me. That it should have presented the action of its adversary in the light of its own desires is not a matter of surprise. But through all the report there runs a spirit of contemptuous vituperation. Not content with attacking the views of its adversaries, it goes on to ridicule them personally and individually. The whole meeting it denominates the "semi-annual gathering of the Federal pie brigade." The members are called "old moss backs," "revenue doodles," and "bung smellers." Persons are mentioned by name, each with what is considered his appropriate term of contempt.

All of this would be no occasion for remark here did it not indicate a serious condition of affairs. To what have we come when the organ of a great body of American citizens ceases to meet its opponent in the fair field of argument and hails them with the taunts of the denizens of the garrets and the gutters? In fact, does not this condition stand for a serious state of political ideas? Does it not mark a decay of statesmanship?

It will not do to say that such a report as has been mentioned is only an incident of a political campaign. The reader who has attended campaign speaking to any considerable extent in the past twenty years in the South will know that this is but an old story. It illustrates a condition. Almost unconsciously we have long ceased to battle for ideas. We have made our appeals to feeling, perhaps shrewdly, because we have realized that it has been easier to reach the feelings, than the judgments, of the mass of Southern voters. When the reporter described this meeting as a convention of "pie hunters," he but used terms which had long been used in the circles in which he had acquired his journalistic training. He is, therefore, an exponent, perhaps an unconscious one, of a school of political ideas to whose true significance we are probably indifferent. He is not to blame more than others who are associated with him; but his reports display a spirit which may well cause us to ask if we have not gone a long way from the sane and profitable ways of discussing questions of public import.

It is difficult to speak as plainly as one ought about this matter without seeming to take sides on the questions which divide the two parties. The writer has no intention to plead for either. He is concerned to see men differ as widely as they choose, but in a tolerant manner. It seems to him that intolerance hides the path of arriving at truth and thus defeats the very purposes of citizenship. If in saying this as clearly as he can it shall seem that he is reflecting upon the course of one party, he must ask that it be considered an incident merely in his argument. If he speaks candidly in regard to the main matter he dares not shirk the implications which his ideas may contain in regard to the political issues of the present.

The extent to which passion has come to dominate political deas in the South is a matter of development. It has for its

into

foundations a number of forces which go back a long way the past. They have struck deep root into our life. They cannot be removed without strenuous efforts on the part of all good people. The very enumeration of them will be worth something in the realization of the extent of their action.

To begin at the beginning, much has been due to the dependence of the mass of Southerners on a landed aristocracy. In the very beginning of the colonial period there appeared in Virginia, and afterwards in other Southern colonies, a ruling class of planters. They came about because there was in the South an abundance of rich land which could be had at low prices. They quickly took up the best lands. Frequently they were able through official influence to get, in advance of the tide of settlement, the very best of the lands, which they sold at a later date at a profit. How great was the tendency to large plantations may be seen in the records of the Virginia land grants. For example, at the meeting of the council on June 14, 1726, the average size of the grants was 1788 acres, and there were at that meeting no extraordinary grants, as at some other meetings, when thirty and forty thousand acres were granted in single patents.

The result of this form of wealth was a number of rich men and a much larger number of poor men. The poor men had not the opportunity of becoming rich. They had little means of education. They could not come to have influence. On the other hand the leading families of the various counties took the offices into their own hands. The appointive offices were reserved for their sons and their sons-in-law. The landholding class thus became an official class. The unaspiring masses accepted this system. They came to look upon their leaders as men of oracular powers. They ceased, indeed they never began, to have opinions of their own about public measures. They voted through the influence which one or another candidate might have on them. It should be said that this state of affairs was not universal in all sections of the South. It did not exist where landholding was not in the form of the great plantation. In some sections, as in upper Virginia and in most of North Carolina, farms were smaller and conditions were more democratic. But affairs in each colony were so conditioned that the landholders were able to dominate its politics.

The political institutions which these people developed were made to conform to their industrial situation. In the Southern colonies generally there was but one elective office, the member of the legislature. He acted for his county in recommending the men whom the governor was to appoint to the county administrative offices. His influence was, therefore, paramount. In such a condition of affairs it was natural for county politics to settle themselves down to a condition of trading and wire-pulling. He who made the best combination of county influences would get the support of the leaders and ultimately the election.

The Revolution modified, but did not abolish, this state of affairs. Many of the offices which had been filled by the appointive power of the governor were now filled by the legislature. The necessity of putting the burden of achieving independence on the shoulders of the common soldier was a guaranty that the constitutions of the new States should contain concessions to the common man. As time passed, however, the common man realized that he had received far less than a full share in the conduct of public affairs. Thus it came about that in most of the Southern States there were shortly before, or shortly after, 1830 amendments of their respective constitutions, which gave the common man a fuller share in government. Such was the amendment of the North Carolina constitution of 1835, when representation was given a more popular basis, the governor was made elective by the people and representation was taken from the towns. This, however, was but a short step toward absolute equality. The suffrage for persons voting for members of the upper house of the legislature was still reserved to the owners of fifty acres of land, and it was not till a hard battle had been fought between the landed classes, extending from 1848 to 1857, that equal suffrage was established.

Another strong force which has entered into the political life of the South both before and after the war has been the prevalence of rural life there. The result of rural conditions is provincialism. It is doubtful if the Southern ideas of county government, both as to essence and as to form, are to-day much in advance of those of the first century of the Southern settlements. Certainly, it would be possible to point to certain features of county government, as highway management, the care of county records, the

conduct of magistrates' courts, and the selection of juries, all more or less inefficient, and none of them appreciably better than they were two centuries ago. Other features which show improvement, as popular education and poor relief, are still far behind the same features in some other parts of America. That this is largely due to rural conditions is shown by the advance which has usually been made over these general conditions in counties in which large towns are situated. Here schools, roads, poor relief, and the lowest rank of courts are notably better than in the essentially rural districts.

Another force in the development of Southern political life was slavery. It is easy to overestimate, and also easy to underestimate, the influence of slavery in Southern life. Whether or not it was a primary influence, it is unquestionable that it worked in entire harmony with the rural and aristocratic tendencies of the South. It could have had no influence toward the growth of hard thinking. It certainly tended to increase the benevolent feelings of some masters and the severe feelings of others. But there can be no doubt that the entrance of slavery into the political discussions of the day did much to inflame the minds of the people and to implant there a bitterness which has not been removed to this very day. The spread of cotton cultivation and the consequent increase in the profitableness of slavery gave the institution a firmer hold in the minds of Southerners in 1850 than it had had in 1780. The result was that whereas in 1780 not a few men of discretion and good judgment had opposed slavery and regretted it as a source of evil, in 1850 there was practically no voice raised in the South against it and many speakers and writers, clerical and lay, were defending it as a divine institution. The fervor with which the pro-slavery views were defended was developed into great bitterness by the counter bitterness of the abolitionists of the North.

When the war was over the landed classes had received a severe blow, but not necessarily a fatal one. Slavery was gone, it is true, but there remained their fertile lands and the monopoly of cotton, rice, and sugar growing. The negroes were still present as free labor, and although they were paid wages which amounted to more than the cost of keeping the former slaves, yet these wages were only a small part of the profits of farming and fre