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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Politics - 20. Underlying Factors - 4. The Southern Defense Ideology
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444 An American Dilemma
defense ideology had to keep their opinions to themselves or they risked
their social status, their economic advance, their freedom, and, in extreme
cases, their bodily security and life, if they did not take refuge in the
North. Hinton Rowan Helper’s book. The Impending Crisis of the South
(1857),^® showed how the South lagged behind the North economically,
how the growth of industries was hampered, how the yields were lower in
all comparable crops, and how, particularly, the slavery-plantation system
was an inefficient and disastrous organization of agricultural production.
The author violently accused “the Lords of the Lash” for perpetuating the
white majority in unparalleled illiteracy, poverty and dependence. This
book became a best seller in the North and exerted a tremendous influence
on Northern thinking. It was blacklisted in the South, and the author could
not come back to his homeland.
That the book does not express the opinions of the lower white strata
in the Southern social pyramid. Helper readily admits and regrets. In
their poverty, ignorance, and dependence, they knew generally little about
the world outside the Southern region which was gradually becoming
culturally isolated. And they were offered one great and glittering solace:
“white supremacy.” They were not at the bottom, they were protected
from the status of Negroes by a clear dividing line, and they were told
that they could compete freely up to the very top. Few Southerners, even
among the nonslaveholding classes, were inclined to dissent from this
dogma. Agreeing on the point of “white supremacy,” the rest of the
elaborated pro-slavery theory offered the most convenient and most
efficient rationalization. When they heard that the North wanted to free
’
the Negro slaves, and when they sensed the danger of being thrown into
actual competition with the black masses, the great majority of whites even
outside the slaveholders felt their solidarity with the latter.
The defeat in the War which followed did not break the general direc-
iion of Southern political thinking or the allegiance to it among Southern
whites. The harsh measures taken by the victorious North to reform the
South quickly favored a consolidation of reactionary forces. This consolida-
tion became particularly effective in disfranchising the Negroes when the
North no longer wished to bear the costs and the inconveniences of up-
holding its military regime indefinitely. Slavery as an institution was, of
course, out, as was also the possibility of pretending that the South was
God’s richest and best social creation. Large sectors of the elaborate
philosophy of the ante-bellum South therefore had to be consigned to
oblivion. But the doctrine of white supremacy became, under these condi-
tions, the more paramount. On this point practically all whites agreed:
the impoverished and embittered aristocrats j
the parvenus
y
struggling for
status j
and the masses of poor white people, afraid of competition from
the hated and despised black freedmen.
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