The

South Atlantic Quarterly.

The True and the False in Southern Life*

BY REV. JOHN E. WHITE, D. D.,

Pastor of Second Baptist Church, Atlanta, Ga.

The statement that "Abraham Lincoln was the first typical American" awakens no protest in the South. We have probably the larger share in the stuff that went to make Lincoln and besides this the statement implies that George Washington and other great Americans were not typical Americans and therefore must have been typical Southerners. The people of the South cannot at the present time take too much pride in this fact. It reminds us that there was a time when the South gave lessons to the whole world in liberty and progress and it brings us sharply about to face the question whether such a time will ever come again.

This question suggests immediately the subject of the message I seek earnestly to bring: "The True and the False in Southern Life." The idea that the Southern people are a peculiar people has been impressed on us all our lives. From the dawn of his intelligence the Southern boy is bred to the sentiment that the Southerner is a separate and distinct sort of man, especially different from the Northerner, and that the distinction is one of which he should be proud. I am sure that any one of you recognize it as a kind of inbred sentiment thoroughly common and even commonplace among us. This prevalent idea is from one point of view a most valuable asset of Southern manhood. Such of it as proceeds from a native self-respect, from a sense of individuality in ourselves, is healthy and a charming quality of Southern temperament.

Address delivered at Trinity College, Durham, N. C., on the occasion of the civic celebration on Washington's Birthday, February 22, 1906.

But from another point of view and in its exaggerated form, I am disposed to think it is not a healthy state of mind, not the outcome of innate and original causes, but the result of pressure from without, which has shaped the temper of the South unnaturally into a rather morbid self-consciousness, or should I say, over-consciousness.

The Southern people have been much pointed out. There is a feeling that we have been under suspicion and that we are still objects of distrustful investigation on the part of the outside world. Now, to be an object of any kind of pointed attention does not usually promote healthy-mindedness in a man, and it has undoubtedly been the misfortune of the South to suffer a great deal of unintelligent staging before the world both at the hands of the charitable and the uncharitable. A normal state of mind about ourselves could scarcely be expected.

One of the great men of Harvard University, not long ago remarked earnestly to a Southern man, "The Southerners have always seemed foreigners to me. The Northern and the Southern people are different, I do not think they will ever work out the same ideals." Bring this remark down and place it beside the statement made by a Southern orator at the University of Virginia that "No space nor time or the convenience of any human arm can reconcile institutions for the turbulent fanatic of Plymouth Rock and the God-fearing Christian of Jamestown. You may assign them to the closest territorial proximity with all the forms and shows of civilization, but you can never cement them into the bonds of brotherhood," and you can understand why the idea that the Southern people are peculiar and separate has gotten such a hold upon our minds.

All great questions are at the last personal questions. As a Southern man, born, reared and educated in one, and living and working in another of the most Southern of the Southern States; brought up upon the heart stirring episodes of a gallant Confederate father's life, without much knowledge of or association with people not Southerners, I have found in this sentiment that a Southern man is a distinct and peculiar sort of man a question of great personal interest. It appeals

to my moral earnestness to know what is in me or about me that is not common to other men? What are my peculiarities, my mental and moral eccentricities as a Southern man? And are they such as I should be proud of and such as I should desire to transmit to my children? It is my philosophy of life, my religion, that there is no geography in morals, and that there is somewhere an exact judgment of the right and the wrong, and that my thoughts, feelings and actions are to be tested now and hereafter by that unimpeachable standard. Nothing short of this absolute morality ought to satisfy me, no matter who I am or where I live. So I want to know, and I think every other morally earnest man in the South ought to want to know, whether his Southern peculiarities will square by this standard, or how much of them will and how much will not. The question goes at the roots of personal character. To be careless of it is neither self-respecting nor brave.

There are still other judgments to which our Southern peculiarities must be submitted. The judgment of history is one; the world's opinion, the common conscience of mankind is another; an old Southern document-the Declaration of Independence, commits the descendants of Washington and Jefferson to "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind;" and there is still a third-the criterion of what is native and true to the Southern character in the light of what our whole history shows to be standard, genuine, intrinsic, historical in the genius of the South. Here is the place I wish to bring the inquiry of what is true and what is false in Southern life. Let us be tried by George Washington and Robert E. Lee. Let the level of their hearts and lives be the level of judgment for what is recent and false in Southern life and of what is old and true, for they are by a universal emotion in the South loved and praised as representative of the Southern character.

Looking upon the calm and steady face of Washington and upon the knightly figure of Lee, I pronounce with certainty of conviction that many things accepted as Southern peculiarities by the Southern people themselves and advertised as Southern eccentricities outside the South, would be repu

diated by these two men whose criterion we would accept against the world. Ideas, feelings, sentiments, attitudes, actions, policies, even principles which are claimed as characteristic of the South and defended as such are not true to what Southern people are at the bottom. They are to be properly understood as transient phases of human nature under an unnatural strain. They do not represent the normal but the abnormal in Southern temper. They have no tolerance in the intrinsic thought and highest conscience of the Southern people. In the best loyalty they ought not to be ascribed to the peculiar temperament of Southerners, ought not to be excused on such grounds and ought not to be handed down to another generation with a false glamour about them.

We are familiar with certain phases of human nature which exhibit human weakness. Probably in most instances these weaknesses are traceable to environment rather than to heredity. A man will be selfish, or stubborn, or enviousvery prevalent human faults among men. We speak of them as characteristics. But at that safest altar of moral judg ment we know-the mother's knee-are these faults excused or commended? Is the child taught that he is to inherit them loyally as a kind of family heirloom? I have heard of the man who went so far in his family pride as to say, "My grandfather had a wooden leg; my father had a wooden leg; I have a wooden leg." But I have not heard of the man who said he wanted his child to have a wooden leg. So when, as sometimes we do, we hear a man say concerning some lawless outbreak of public passion, some revengeful barbarity, some defiant disregard of law and civilization,—or read the newspaper that says concerning it, "That is the way we do things in the South," let us be loyal enough to ask, "What would George Washington, James Madison, John Marshall, Nathaniel Macon, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson say to that as an estimate of true Southern character?"

I have an intelligent friend who has never lived in the United States outside the South, though not an American by birth or education. He has lived in the South for twelve

or more years and is thoroughly identified with Southern people. I have several times heard him express a glowing admiration for the country in which he has cast his lot and of the people among whom he is a respected factor of progress. I have taken counsel of his mind on the basis of our friendship to know frankly of him what are our notable and characteristic faults as a people. This is his opinion:

"There are three phases of public sentiment that I must regard as weaknesses, though I think I have a sympathetic understanding of the conditions which are responsible for them. The public attitude of Southern temper is over-sensitive and too easily resents criticism. This is not much, perhaps, but you know how such a state of mind makes people unhappy and tends to hinder progress. It would be more manly and in harmony with the native dignity of a great people if the South would stand up and be calm under criticism rather than get mad and go to pieces. Then, I think the Southern people are too easily swayed by an apparent public sentiment, the broader and higher conscience of the people gives way too readily to a tin pan clamor, the depth and real force of which they are not disposed to question. There is difference between the private state of mind of individuals and their public influence. One man or a few men are able to lead public sentiment, or what for the time appears to be public sentiment, away from the private personal judgment of twice their number of larger and stronger men. Public sentiment rises and falls too much under sharp pressure. It never seems steadily settled against sudden eruption. There is a lack of stable equilibrium.

"Again, I have noted what in effect at least is of graver consequence, that the South as a section, does not seem fully to appreciate the importance of the inevitables in civilization -the fixed and unalterable laws of progress. There is a disposition to plead exception from the operation of universal principles of social growth which have proven their inevitableness everywhere else. For instance, if you show the figures of great illiteracy among the white people, no one disputes their correctness and I have often smiled at the answer, 'Oh, well, the South will get there all right.'