215 
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 opy 1 
 
 Co/.' 
 
 THE MEANING OF 
 
 "The Solid South" 
 
 AN ADDRESS BY 
 CHARLES WILLIAM DABNEY 
 
 k 
 
 S 
 
 AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF 
 ALABAMA, TUSCALOOSA, MAY 26, 1909, AND REPEATED 
 BY REQUEST AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CENTRAL 
 UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY, DANVILLE, JUNE 9, 1909 
 
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 X -;<^v 
 
 ^^ 
 
 THE MEANING OF "THE SOLID SOUTH." 
 
 In no free government of an intelligent and patriotic 
 people can one find, in this twentieth century of rapid com- 
 munication and intimate commercial relations, a situation 
 just like that of the people of our Southern States today. 
 Here they stand, politically united against the people of the 
 North and West, just as they did the year the war ended, 
 and yet feeling no animosity towards any. Calmly, con- 
 sistently, resolutely, for nearly two generations, the Southern 
 people have maintained this remarkable position almost with- 
 out passion and wholly without physical contest. Other 
 provinces have held out in this way when oppressed and 
 persecuted, but no other known to me has ever maintained 
 such a position so long, while in a state of perfect amity with 
 their fellow citizens of other sections. Surely some cause 
 more fundamental than mere sectionalism, racial prejudice, 
 or political necessity must account for this remarkable phe- 
 nomenon. It is evident on the face of it that some high 
 principle has supported this devoted people in their position 
 through this long period. What, then, is the meaning of "the 
 Solid South"? 
 
 In every essential of national sentiment the United States 
 is a thoroughly united people. In devotion to our charac- 
 teristic American ideals, liberty of the individual and equality 
 of opportunity for all, in industry and in education, at work 
 and at play, our people are united. Northern capital builds 
 Southern mills and Southern men sell the products to North- 
 ern consumers. Northern money aids iii founding Southern 
 schools, and Southern boys and girls go to Northern colleges. 
 We visit back and forth in happy friendly relations. Our sons 
 and daughters intermarry, the more freely, apparently, be- 
 cause their grandfathers tried to kill each other. National 
 feeling is certainly as strong in the South as it is in the 
 North, only with the difference that in the South it is usually 
 a little more openly and eloquently expressed. In the war for 
 the liberation of Cuba, Southern boys marched side by side 
 with Northern and Western, proudly wearing the blue and 
 following the flag their fathers fought against, and North 
 Carolina gave the first martyr on the sea and Tennessee on 
 the land. Working together in factory and farm, united in 
 hearts and in homes, we still persist, however, in remaining 
 divided in our political affiliations. 
 
 Today, however, many of us sincerely believe that the 
 3 
 
time has come when thoughtful men, especially the edu- 
 cated young men who are to lead these people in the future, 
 should carefully consider the grounds of this sectional politi- 
 cal division and its meaning to our country. "The Solid 
 South" had its reason for being; it had its mission; it has 
 evidently clone good service. What was the reason for its 
 being, the meaning, the mission of "the Solid South"? 
 Whatever this mission was, the South has fulfilled it at the 
 expense of wealth, of blood, and of life ; and she still main- 
 tains her isolated political position at great sacrifice. One of 
 the greatest of her sacrifices, for example, is loss of national 
 political leadership. 
 
 Both great national parties, it seems, have practically 
 agreed that the section of the country which, prior to 1861, 
 furnished nine of the fifteen Presidents and six of the fourteen 
 Vice-presidents, is today disqualified from furnishing- any 
 candidates for these highest offices of the nation. The South 
 accepts this verdict for its own, the Democratic party, just as 
 the North does for its party, the Republican. Moreover, this 
 rule is carried out almost to the total exclusion of the states- 
 men of the South from the active councils of the republic 
 founded by their fathers. Thus, the intellect and the char- 
 acter, representing one-third of the population and one-sixth of 
 the wealth of the country, have no direct part in shaping the 
 political policies or in administering the higher affairs of the 
 nation, to whose interests they are so cordially devoted. By 
 this process the nation loses the active co-operation of a por- 
 tion of its population more purely American in blood and 
 in love of country than that of any other section, and it loses 
 in part the talents of a race noted for its political ability and 
 wisdom. To the foreigner, we are told, the remarkable fact 
 about this situation is that it persists by the will of the people 
 of the excluded section. 
 
 No patriotic men of any party or section can think that 
 such a condition is best for the country as a whole. Cer- 
 tainly it is not best for the young men of the South, like those 
 here today. Has the fact that these young men have grown 
 up amidst such conditions made them blind to that which 
 others wonder at? Has tradition gripped us in its paralyzing 
 arms until we have lost all desire for political influence? 
 
 For those shallow thinkers who urge a breaking up of 
 "the Solid South" merely to get into the national game, one 
 can have little sympathy. For those opportunists who, wear- 
 
 GIFT 4 
 
 mttS. WOODROW WILSOW 
 "OV. 25. 1039 
 
ied of this isolation, want offices, or for those whose selfish 
 industrial interests move them to seek different political 
 associations, one can have at this time no deep concern. But 
 one must have a profound sympathy and a deep concern 
 for those serious-minded men who are thinking inde- 
 pendently about political matters, and who purpose in the 
 future to act independently of mere traditions and party 
 prejudices. There must be such here this morning. To such 
 brave, thoughtful souls, I come as a brother, a Southern man, 
 born and trained, to speak earnestly the truth as I see it. 
 
 To understand the present meaning of "the Solid South" 
 we must recall the history of its formation. Though as fa- 
 miliar as the catechism to these older men, I wish, for the 
 sake of my younger hearers, to state, once more, the case 
 of the fathers. 
 
 I affirm, in the first place, that the Civil War was not 
 merely the means of uniting the Nation, but, paradoxical as 
 it may seem, the means of determining the exact rights of 
 the States, and thus of establishing the essential Anglo-Saxon 
 principle of the right of local self-government. Devotion to 
 this principle, bred in the blood and bone of Southern people, 
 has determined most of their political actions since the be- 
 ginning of the government. 
 
 From the beginning of history, in fact, the instinct of local 
 self-government characterized the Angles and the Saxons. It 
 took a hundred years of Norman domination to weld their 
 masses south of the Tweed into something like a nation. This 
 instinct for self-government extorted the Magna Charta from 
 King John, tore the Church of England away from the Pope, 
 established the Bill of Rights, and finally wrote the Declara- 
 tion of Independence for the new American Republic. It 
 then took six years for the thirteen independent colonies, 
 acknowledged free by the mother country, to adjust their local 
 rights and local jealousies sufficiently to form a federation. 
 If it had not been for the fear of attack from without, it is 
 doubtful whether the colonial governments would have united 
 at all. That they came into the union voluntarily and as an 
 experiment was clearly recognized. Virginia expressly claimed 
 the right to go out at will, and, by tacit agreement, the right 
 of secession was accorded also to the other States. 
 
 The Constitution made by the fathers was, indeed, as Mr. 
 Gladstone said, the greatest document ever written. But it 
 was not a perfect or a complete document. The makers of 
 
 5 
 
the Constitution were so intent on preserving the autonomy 
 of the States and shaping a nice system of balances in the 
 government, that they left the question of the relations of the 
 States to the Federal government to be discussed for seventy- 
 five years, and settled finally by an appeal to the sword. 
 The conflict between the reserved rights of the independent 
 States, acknowledged by Great Britain in 1783, and the rights 
 and powers of the Federal government formed by them in 
 1789, was inevitable. In his famous Thanksgiving proclama- 
 tion of 1863, one of the noblest state papers ever written, 
 Lincoln called this conflict "the lamentable civil strife in 
 which we are unavoidably engaged," — an absolutely correct 
 description of it. He does not call it "rebellion," but "civil 
 strife," and this it was — an appeal to the sword to settle a 
 fundamental Constitutional question, which had been left open 
 in the written documents. From this point of view we now 
 see clearly that it was also "unavoidable." 
 
 Slavery was not the cause of the Civil War, but only its 
 occasion. The whole people were responsible for slavery, not 
 the people of the South alone. The Constitution distinctly 
 recognized slavery, which led the extremist Garrison to char- 
 acterize it as "a league with death and a covenant with hell," 
 and to declare that "slavery could be abolished only by the 
 dissolution of the Union." Every one of the original thirteen 
 States was a slave State. There was, when the nation was 
 formed, no difference of opinion about the right of slavery. 
 The Constitution put a premium on slaves as property by 
 allowing the State three-fifths of a vote for each adult slave in 
 the apportionment of representation. In the Federal Con- 
 vention of 1787, New England voted with South Carolina for 
 the prolongation of the slave trade for twenty years, against 
 the earnest opposition of Virginia, which had already, in 1769, 
 prohibited the further importation of negroes. The simple 
 truth is, that men at that time had not yet conceived the full 
 meaning of the right of every man to "life, liberty, and the 
 pursuit of happiness." For the people who made this glorious 
 Declaration wholly ignored the rights of 200,000 red men, 
 whom we have continued to this day to dispossess of the soil 
 which belonged to their ancestors for unnumbered genera- 
 tions. That their great-grandsons do not yet fully realize their 
 duty to alien races under the Declaration is shown by their 
 recent treatment of Japanese, Hawaiians, and Filipinos. 
 
 Slavery became a national question only when, owing to 
 
unfavorable economic conditions in the North, the institution 
 was transferred to the South, where the cotton gin made slaves 
 increasingly profitable. Of the anti-slavery societies organized 
 before 1830, five-sixths were in the South. The Virginia legisla- 
 ture in 1832 "tied" on a bill for the gradual emancipation of all 
 slaves in that State. It was the abolition movement in the 
 North and the eflfort of the South to extend slavery to the 
 territories, that made the question a national one. Dema- 
 gogues on both sides started an agitation which led Southern 
 people to believe that the acts restricting slavery were an in- 
 vasion of their rights to regulate the affairs of their own States 
 for themselves. It was thus as an attack on the reserved 
 rights of the States, that the slavery question became the oc- 
 casion of the Civil War. Fundamentalh^ the principle at issue 
 was the old one of the rights of the States against the rights 
 of the federal government. The great service of the South to 
 the political development of the country before 1861 was this 
 contest to prevent the centralization of power in the federal 
 government. Historically, the demand for a strict interpreta- 
 tion of the Constitution in all matters of local self-govern- 
 ment, is the best contribution of the South to the cause of 
 democracy. 
 
 From the theory of the rights of the States the South 
 deduced logically the right of secession, a right which had 
 been distinctly claimed on six separate occasions by New 
 England States down to 1844, when the legislature of Massa- 
 chusetts passed an ordinance declaring that "the annexation of 
 Texas tended to draw the States into a dissolution of the 
 Union," and that Massachusetts "was determined to submit 
 her undelegated power to no body of men on earth." All the 
 States believed also in the right of secession. Davis and Lee 
 were taught States rights and secession at West Point.* The 
 one fact of history, therefore, that Southern scholars should 
 emphasize is, that from the founding of the nation to the 
 Civil War, the South did not contend to break down the Con- 
 stitution, as some would ignorantly teach, but to maintain 
 the Constitution as she understood it. She did not fight to 
 destroy the government, but to preserve the government as 
 her fathers made it. The South's demand was only that State 
 institutions should not be interfered with, and that the Con- 
 stitution should be interpreted literally, as understood at the 
 time of its adoption. The South did not contend for human 
 
 •Col. R. BinKham, in North American Review, September. 1904— a vnlimble paper, to 
 which I make my acknowledKments. 
 
slavery without regard to Constitutional rights or love of the 
 government. Her mistake was in making, in her fight for the 
 rights of the States, an issue of the question of keeping human 
 beings in slavery, a wrong that no Constitution could make 
 right. 
 
 Having appealed to the sword to maintain the right of 
 secession, the Southern people accepted in good faith the ad- 
 verse decision of the sword. So was re-established at last that 
 "indestructible union of indestructible States" — this union of 
 independent States "as distinct as the billows and yet as one 
 as the sea." 
 
 It was a blessing for the whole world that the secession 
 theory did not prevail. Had it prevailed, America would have 
 been divided into as many wretched little warring republics as 
 South America. While the United States was disunited, Euro- 
 pean powers, in contempt of the Alonroe Doctrine, occupied 
 IMexico, established Maximilian as emperor, and supported 
 him by French bayonets — a beginning of what would have 
 gone on rapidly, if our country had not been reunited. Had 
 the Confederacy succeeded, the little contending republics 
 would have sought to strengthen themselves by European 
 alliances, and as a consequence North America would have 
 been divided up into "spheres of influence," as Africa or China 
 are today, this world's latest and greatest attempt at self- 
 government would have been pointed to by the autocrats of 
 Europe as the bloodiest and saddest failure among men, and 
 Anglo-Saxon free government, now extended to one-third of 
 the world, and spreading rapidly over the remainder, would 
 have been set back for centuries. 
 
 Though conquered physically, the South won spiritually, 
 however; another illustration that the body is corruptible, 
 while the spirit is immortal. For the sufferings and sacrifices 
 of the Civil War and of the reconstruction period have resulted 
 in the complete and final solution of the problem of the 
 relation of the States to the federal government. Unfor- 
 tunately, however, the ballot was conferred upon a horde of 
 negroes, ignorant and unmoral, trained to dependence, in- 
 capable of intelligent self-direction. That this was a disastrous 
 mistake is now acknowledged freely in the North. .Vnd it 
 was this mistake on the part of the national government 
 which crystalized "the Solid South" and made it, in fact, for 
 a whole generation an imperative necessity. To a unit, the 
 white voters resisted the domination through the ballot of an 
 
 8 
 
ignorant and inferior people. Little by little, by force at first, 
 by careful legislation afterwards, when such became possible, 
 the Southern States succeeded in again placing their govern- 
 ments in competent hands, in framing laws which should 
 eventually wipe out illiteracy, and in further emphasizing the 
 doctrine of the right of the people to local self-government. 
 Under the wise and able leadership of Senator George, of Mis- 
 sissippi, doubtful and sometimes criminal methods of con- 
 trolling the negro vote have now been replaced by Constitu- 
 tional laws, based on the reserved power of the States to regu- 
 late the franchise. These laws will guarantee peace, security 
 and prosperity to both races. 
 
 This settlement of the suffrage question by the State 
 constitutions is now universally recognized. North as well as 
 South, as the final word on the subject. A plan for the reduc- 
 tion of Southern representation, proposed in political plat- 
 forms for the purpose of capturing the negro vote in certain 
 .doubtful States, was killed in a Congress containing a large 
 Republican majority. Thus Congress put its stamp of ap- 
 proval on the rights of the States to control the franchise. 
 Both Ex-President Roosevelt and President Taft have de- 
 clared that, if these Southern election laws are fairly admin- 
 istered, they should not be interfered with. Finallyy the 
 Supreme Court of the United States has sustained the new 
 State constitutions. In consequence, not only has the right 
 of the States to regulate the franchise been determined once 
 and for all, but with it the dread of negro domination has 
 been banished forever from our minds. Moreover, the Con- 
 stitutional amendments, debarring the illiterate- negro from 
 voting, and fixing for him an educational qualification, are of 
 incalculable value to the negro himself, for they have given 
 him his first real hope of having his political rights as a citizen 
 permanently recognized. The South has provided the means 
 of his acquiring an education ; for, at the time the new consti- 
 tutions were adopted, the Southern people doubled and even 
 quadrupled their taxes for the support of duplicate systems of 
 schools for preparing both races for the intelligent exercise 
 ' of the franchise. Nine-tenths of the money used to educate 
 the negroes comes from the pockets of the white tax payers, 
 who accept the burden as a debt they owe to their country. 
 The generosity of the Southern people to the weaker race is 
 the noblest, the most inspiring feature of the situation. 
 
 With the establishment of the rights of the States and 
 9 
 
with the passing of the fear of negro domination, the chief 
 incentive, the imperative need of a "SoHd South," has thus 
 been removed forever. The work of "the Solid South" has 
 been done, and well done. Now, what of the future? 
 
 We shall not go the length of saying that it is wrong for 
 the South to be "solid." We have not heard that any of our 
 great political teachers have told the people of Pennsylvania, 
 of Maine, or of New Hampshire that it is wicked for them to 
 be "solid." Though no Southern State has been disgraced 
 by such corruption as has Pennsylvania, and none has been so 
 consumed by corporation greed as have New Hampshire and 
 Maine. Neither do we believe that "the Solid South" is going 
 to be broken up immediately. But there is no question that 
 the removal of the fundamental reasons for the existence of 
 "the Solid South" clears the way for independent political ac- 
 tion by the men of the South. It is a great thing to set men's 
 minds free, and it will be a good thing to have strong party 
 opposition in every Southern State. The solidity of the 
 South, with its unfortunate one-party system, has made her 
 citizens politically inefficient, and has produced much stupid 
 legislation, which has retarded the growth of the country. The 
 long preponderance of one party has made it intolerant, while 
 the other party has been reduced to an organization of office 
 seekers, which never comes to life until a Presidential nomi- 
 nation is to be made, when it sweeps together its ignorant 
 black understrappers and sells them to the highest bidder. 
 The South has thus not only lost all its constructive influence 
 in national affairs, but is in danger of losing all the political 
 ability for which its sons were famed in the past. Moreover, 
 now that the way is open to do so, the men of the South should 
 rejoice in the opportunity to strike for freedom from the 
 political rings and bosses which have selfishly gripped the 
 political life of the section. What we want to see is, not parti- 
 san advantage for either of the great national parties, but inde- 
 pendent action by all the voters of the South, black as well 
 as white, that men may not be ashamed to vote any ticket 
 they think right, that thus we may have once more in the 
 South free and efficient self-government. 
 
 It is not desired to go into a discussion of partisan politics 
 here, but it must now be apparent to everyone that no import- 
 ant issues any longer separate the members of the two great 
 national parties. At least it is true that the same political 
 opinions are held by large numbers in both parties. In 
 
 10 
 
recent years some interesting exchanges of planks and 
 some significant crossings over of men have occurred. The 
 leader of the Democratic party charged the ex-President, for 
 example, w^ith having stolen his platform ; and there was much 
 truth in this accusation. The American people would have but 
 one voice if the question were submitted to them, which of 
 these gentlemen was the most effective fighter of the "special 
 interests." Certainly the ex-President is much more nearly 
 akin to the old-fashioned Democrat than to the modern, high 
 tariflf, trust building Republican. Now, Republicans of the 
 West have become strong tariff reformers and are fighting 
 their fellow-partisans in the East for the downward revision 
 promised them in the campaign, while Southern Democratic 
 congressman are hanging around the tariff pie-table, trying 
 to pick up a few crumbs of protection. We perceive at last 
 that the tariff is, in fact, "a. local issue," as General Hancock 
 said, and that the private "interests" have all these years 
 been getting their spoils under the guise of national politics. 
 
 Meanwhile, the party of the South appears to have for- 
 gotten or abandoned its time-tried doctrines of the right of 
 local self-government and of tariff for revenue only. After 
 drifting about for ten years, chasing first one ignis fatuus 
 and then another, without any fixed principles of its own, 
 except opposition to the government, it has come at last into 
 the curious position of having substituted for its traditional 
 platform a traditional candidate. 
 
 Is it not clear, then, that the times are ripe for a new 
 political alignment in the South? Certainly the hour has 
 struck for the independent man, the man who will think, 
 decide and act for himself. To such independent thinking 
 and acting, not to the support of any political party, I call 
 these young men. From such as these and their fellows all 
 over the South will again arise leaders, who will take 
 over into the national consciousness the best virtues, if not 
 all the doctrines, of the old South. For it is not creeds, but 
 character; not doctrines, but deeds, that count in this world. 
 And first of all those virtues is the virtue of loyalty. 
 
 "The Solid South" had its foundation in that spirit of loy- 
 alty to the province and the traditions of the province, which 
 has always characterized noble peoples. Loyalty to a cause 
 is the first duty of every human being. It is the first essential 
 of character in the nation, as well as in the man. Loyalty is 
 the life of the patriot, the heart-throb of the hero. When men 
 
 11 
 
say to us Southerners, then, that we are "provincial," let us 
 answer that we are proud of it, for the philosophers all tell 
 us that provincialism is the beginning of patriotism. 
 
 The social life of a great nation may, however, become so 
 vast that individuals no longer recognize their social unity. 
 All national virtues and securities are founded on the char- 
 acter of the individual and the home. Neither in the Roman 
 Empire nor in the state of Louis XIV. was anybody at home. 
 For during those epochs centralization had developed until 
 the individual social consciousness, the home consciousness 
 and the provincial consciousness were completely swallowed 
 up. Under such vast social orders the government presents 
 the appearance of an institution that the individual finds rela- 
 tively strange to himself and to his home. In such a world 
 loyalty passes into the background or tends to disappear alto- 
 gether. In the province, on the other hand, the individual 
 seeks and finds his own. In the great centralized govern- 
 ment he submits to a greater force and disappears. 
 
 These considerations lead me to ask, has not our national 
 government become in these days rather a distant and power- 
 ful agency for safety, a force that all must fear, rather than an 
 institution to be loved, as our provincial ancestors loved it? 
 The other forces of society, the great combinations of physi- 
 cal power, like our transcontinental railroads ; the enormous 
 aggregation of capital, like the trusts; or the tremendous 
 industrial organizations, like the steel and copper companies, 
 now engage our attention and absorb our interest, while we 
 either use them for our gain or flee from them for our safety. 
 Such vast forces excite our curiosity or our wonder, but they 
 arouse no loyalty, produce no national sentiment, but rather 
 the contrary. All ideals are weakened, all loyalties are im- 
 paired, by these mechanical, soulless forces. The noise and 
 din of our tremendous industries threaten to drown the 
 voice of patriotism, while the smoke and dust of our vast 
 production cloud the skies and hide the stars by which we 
 must steer the "ship of state." 
 
 Such conditions tend not only to destroy loyalty to city, 
 state and nation ; they drive many of us to take refuge in par- 
 tisan organizations, protective associations and trade unions, 
 which would not be necessary if we were not opposed by these 
 gigantic centralized organizations of capital. Manufacturers 
 must organize against their laborers because the laborers are 
 organized against the manufacturers. Such organizations may 
 
 12 
 
be necessary, and are properly conducted sometimes, but the 
 danger is that they are absorbing all the interest and loyalty 
 of many of our fellow-citizens, and so are destroying national 
 consciousness. The breaking of home-ties, the weakening 
 influence of the church, the mad lust for wealth and power, 
 the extravagant display and luxury of the rich, the corruption 
 of our cities, all speak loudly of a loss of loyalty to state and 
 country, to truth and right, that is appalling. 
 
 These signs of the times should warn us to cherish this 
 provincialism, which has largely saved the South and its 
 people from these terrible evils. Even if isolation has brought 
 poverty and retarded our development, it were better to re- 
 main provincial than that these greater evils should come upon 
 us. Loyalty to home, state, and section tend to preserve the 
 ideals of truth and right upon which the permanence of our 
 institutions depend. For this reason we sincerely believe that 
 the provincial South has still a great service to render the 
 nation in the future. The nation will need our province-bred 
 loyalty to fight other battles, moral as well as physical. Per- 
 haps there should be a new "Solid South." If so, let us con- 
 sider what may be its meaning and mission. 
 
 The provincialism of the South, taken in the sense of indi- 
 vidualism, is needed today as a bulwark against increasing 
 centralization. The state, like everything in nature, is an 
 organism, built up of unit cells, organs, and parts, each minis- 
 tering to each other. Each cell and organ must be in good 
 health and function properly, or the body is not healthy; and, 
 in order to do this, each must be fed and exercised. No one 
 organ can long absorb all the nourishment and do all the 
 work without destroying the whole body. "The eye cannot 
 say unto the hand, I have no need of thee ; nor again, the head 
 to the feet, I have no need of you." Centralized government 
 weakens the individual and the home, and tends, by interfering 
 with their functions, to destroy the town and the state. Pater- 
 nalism may, in time, be as ruinous of man's home institutions 
 as tyranny. 
 
 Decided symptoms of this disease appear in our nation 
 today. Through legislation for the "interests," through high, 
 protective tariffs, through a loose system of pensions, et 
 cetera, we are training our people to look to the government 
 for everything. "Be it enacted" has come to be the one cure- 
 all for every defect or disease of the body politic. National 
 politics and legislative interference by the States are the bane 
 
 13 
 
of our municipal governments. The meddling of Washington 
 with State affairs is more hurtful than helpful. Then is there 
 not, indeed, a need of a new Solid South today, a Solid South 
 with a new ser\'ice to the old cause of the rights of man in 
 local government? 
 
 Against such encroachments of the central government 
 upon the local governments, and against these tendencies 
 weakening to the individual, the only protection is a strong 
 social consciousness in the citizen, making him resolutely 
 independent in all local matters. This is precisely what "the 
 Solid South" has stood for these fifty years, and this is what 
 it should continue to stand for. 
 
 Provincialism, however, is not sectionalism. Sectionalism 
 is narrow, ignores the rights of other peoples, opposes them, 
 and tends to disloyalty and disunion. Provincialism is the 
 tendency of the people of a province to possess and cherish 
 their own customs, traditions, ideals, beliefs, and aspirations. 
 It does not oppose itself to the same state of mind in others; 
 it is not narrow, jealous, or disloyal to the whole. Let us 
 therefore, as broadminded men avoid sectionalism in the 
 South, but let us cultivate a healthy, a fair provincialism. Let 
 us preserve all our local traditions and customs, our history 
 and our literature, our ideals and beliefs, as a means of train- 
 ing our young people to loyalty. This will not lessen, but 
 rather increase, their national loyalty. The two spirits, the 
 spirit of national unity and that of local independence, should 
 grow together. Love of and pride in the individual com- 
 munity should only increase our love of country. 
 
 What, then, is the mission of the independent voter in the 
 South to-day ? Shall he, for example, use his vote to break "the 
 Solid South"? The thoughtful Southerner will, I think, not 
 strive to break "the Solid South" for any single reason here 
 suggested. He will not feel justified in doing this merely to 
 put an end to political isolation, stagnation and intolerance, 
 serious though these evils be. He might not see his way clear 
 to do so merely to permit freer political action, give a chance 
 for a second political party, and so secure more progressive 
 State legislation, and prevent corruption, important as all 
 these things are. He would scarcely be willing to do so. 
 merely to get into the national game and give our young men 
 a vent for their political energy, and a share in the nation's 
 thought and progress, desirable as this undoubtedly is. I do 
 not think the sincere patriot would be satisfied with any one, 
 
 14 
 
or perhaps all, of these reasons. The Solid South stood for 
 principles far more important, much deeper than the con- 
 siderations here named. The earnest man, not an oppor- 
 tunist, will want to see ultimate ends of more vital importance 
 than these before he will break with these old traditions. 
 To all such I commend the historic testimony of the South 
 as a cause fully worthy of their devotion. What better 
 can the sincere Southerner do than continue to help maintain 
 the testimony of the fathers since they landed on this conti- 
 nent, the testimony of the Anglo-Saxon race since the begin- 
 ning of its history — this testimony for the freedom of the 
 individual to govern himself, his family, his town and his 
 State? Forgetting the wild economic theories of recent years, 
 forgetting secession and slavery, too, let our young men 
 never forget that the original "Solid South" stood for the rights 
 of the State, for the right of self-government everywhere as 
 opposed to centralization and imperialism. Just as our fathers 
 in the Revolution were fighting the battles of Englishmen 
 everywhere, as all Englishmen cordially acknowledge now, 
 so our fathers in the war between the States were fighting the 
 battle of State governments everywhere. 
 
 In face of these new propositions for government owner- 
 ship of railroads from one quarter, and for what is practically 
 government administration of corporations from another quar- 
 ter; in face of the threatening socialism, presented in one 
 guise by Democrats and in another by Republicans, there is 
 surely need of this ancient testimony of the South for the 
 individual rights of men and a government restricted to the 
 business of governing. This, then, may well be the mission 
 of the new Solid South — to help keep alive and effective 
 the old doctrine upon which all our liberties are founded, the 
 doctrine of the right of men to govern their own home aflfairs. 
 Our study leads us to conclude, therefore, that, while most 
 of the original reasons for the existence of "the Solid South" 
 have by the logic of events been removed, there is still this 
 fundamental principle to be considered before we join any 
 new political party. 
 
 That the intelligence and conservatism of other sections 
 honor the South for her brave testimony in defeat and iso- 
 lation for the right of local self-government, there is in- 
 creasingly abundant evidence. Orators at reunions of war 
 veterans, for example, are in the habit of saying that, as a 
 matter of fact, both sides conquered in the war: that while the 
 
 15 
 
LIBRPRY OF CONGRESS 
 
 North defeated secession and abolished slavery, the X'Utn 
 saved the rights of :he States and re-established the Constitu- 
 tion. When this is fully recognized. North and South, the 
 last cause for difference will be removed and no possible 
 ground will remain for this unfortunate sectional political 
 division. To make this understood by all the people will 
 require education, and to this task our colleges may well 
 devote themselves. 
 
 Young gentlemen of Alabama and the South, I have sought 
 to show you how. through a long historical process, every step 
 of which was characterized by pathetic and yet glorious loyalty 
 to what seemed for forty years a lost national cause, your 
 fathers preserved for us the ideals of free government for 
 which their fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers gave 
 their lives. Few chapters of history reveal more clearly than 
 this sad story of the South the glorifying discipline of defeat, 
 and the divine philosophy which commands that the truth 
 must be cfucified to draw all men unto it. Failure to win vis- 
 ible success idealized and glorified this cause for your faithful 
 fathers, and inspired them to work for its realization in the 
 far-off future. In the providence of the great God, who over- 
 rules all things in this world, you are now called upon to take 
 up the task where your fathers laid it down. You are called 
 to carry on the struggle in order that their glorious ideals of 
 free government may be realized, not merely in our beloved 
 South, but in this whole nation. 
 
 .An almost inspired statement of this great doctrine of self- 
 government was uttered by the martyred saviour of the union, 
 whose memory all Americans, South as well as North, now 
 love. With a solemn purpose and with profound reverence 
 for the memory of all the dead who died on those terrible 
 plains of Gettysburg, I use as a charge to you, young men of 
 the South, the words he used in his charge to the men of the 
 North : 
 
 "It is for us to be dedicated to the great task reiuaining 
 before us ; that from these honored dead we take increased 
 devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full 
 measure of devotion : that we here highly resolve that these 
 dead" — and our Southern dead also — "shall not have died in 
 vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of 
 freedom, and that government of the people, by the people 
 and for the people shall not perish from the earth." 
 I 'uiirrsity of Cittcinfiali, Ma\\ 1909. 
 
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 014 442 249 1