South Quotes
This is a very important quotation. In large part America's development to a great power was the result of American industry and enterprise. However, that characteristic among the Americans was rare in the South as de Tocqueville herein observes. This was one of the pernicious consequences of slavery. The Southern whites could live a very comfortable life without any ingenuity, innovation, hard work, passion or much effort of any kind. There was nothing that the South produced or created without slaves that anyone wanted or advanced the nation. Even after the Civil War and emancipation it took decades before the white Southerners began to adopt the enterprising behavior that the rest of America was known for and it would take until the 21st century for parts of the South the reach parity in this area with most of the rest of the nation.
When the first Southern States seceded, each appointed a whose job it was to persuade the other Southern States to also secede. In this case Hale was marketing secession to Kentucky which with Maryland were the only two Southern States to reject what they regarded as treason and rebellion. The importance of the quotation however is in his argument which was all based on enmity to racial equality and abolition. Later Southern apologists would argue that the Civil War was fought, not about slavery and racism butt about different philosophies of government. See {623715} .
The South then had the poorest education in the country and recovery from the Great Depression was made easier by a workforce that was educated enough to handle many of the new jobs and new techniques of doing the old jobs. And that was where the South lagged. The small farms which were the mainstay of the Southern economy were by then far less important as agriculture was undergoing major changes, technological and ecoomic, with many small farmers leaving the farms for the factories if they could.
Arnett saw that the fate of the Black in the South was inextricably connected to that of the Southern white, most of whom were illiterate like the Blacks.
At the end of WWII Black Southern men, who had fought for America and seen many of their fellows killed, returned to a segregated, viciously racist South that was intellectually, educationally, scientifically, and culturally backward compared to the rest of the country. Radio from outside the South reached Southerners and TV was just starting. Yet the white establishment was determined to maintain the status quo.
