Since the Civil War, many authors and critics, such as Ulrich B. Phillips and C. Vann Woodward among others, have attempted to define and grasp what exactly is the central theme of Southern American History. While many ideas an ideologies have influenced and shaped popular views of the South, there is no single idea that encompasses the entirety of what the South is, but rather a conglomerations of many views which all mesh together, despite their diversity, to create a unified whole.
Although many wish to dodge the issue, the most undeniably significant issue throughout Southern history in one way or another is that of race relations. According to Ulrich B. Phillips in his book The Central Theme of Southern History, the identity of the South is focused around the idea that it is “a white man’s country”. While many argue that state rights or free trade or slavery or cotton or any number of other typically southern affiliations are the primary issues, Phillips believes that white supremacy overarches all of these, as it is the common theme among them. Because of this Southern sense of duty to preserve a “white man’s world” and as “white men’s ways must prevail; the Negroes must be kept innocuous”. While in the 21st century South of today such a thesis is not often blatantly held among Southerners, in ways this issue still remains in the hearts of her people. Even by the 1960’s when Flannery O’Connor wrote her short story “Revelation,” Southerners were beginning to take on a more open-minded view of race relations. Mrs. Turpin, portrayed as a typical Southern bigot continuing to hold a prejudice against African Americans as inferior, slowly comes to realize the error of her views as the story progresses, finally recognizing that, in her prejudice, she was herself becoming what she despised. She wonders, if forced to choose between being “a nigger or white-trash” which she would choose. Juxtaposing the two and hardly able to decide, she finally concludes that she would rather be the former. While the value on white supremacy is still there, there is also a sense of the Negroes as inferior and simple while those she considers “white trash” are Caucasians who choose to make themselves subordinate and like the blacks and therefore are detestable to the white sense of supremacy and superiority. Continually ruling to her husband’s Negro field hands as foolish, when she shares the story of insane girl who attacked her in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, she continues to show her prejudice, saying “You could never say anything intelligent to a nigger.” Sadly, she believes herself to fulfill the duties of her class, as she states “its not trash around her, black or white, that I haven’t given to. And break my back to the bone every day working. And do for the church.” Yet, in the end, she finally admits to being the wart hog her attacker defamed her as, releasing her prejudice as she realizes that she is her self the simple-minded, inferior being simply because of her white view of the world and what God considers acceptable. While U.B. Phillips viewpoint, echoed in the work of Flannery O’Connor is of crucial importance in Southern history, white supremacy alone does not comprehend the entirety of the South.
There are a copious number of stereotypes in association with Southern identity derived from several different sources, and many of which are not in the least accurate, although springing from real aspects of Southern history. When Europeans first began to arrive in the New World, they did so primarily under a head right system in which wealthier landowners paid the passage of those of the poorer classes in exchange for their work for a period of years in an arrangement known as indentured servitude. Next, as indentured servants and the generations following began to obtain their own properties, another class began to develop as people took the opportunities that the South, particularly its then frontier regions offered. W.J. Cash, in chapter five of The Mind of the South, paints the picture of an Irishman building a small log cabin and toiling over his plot of land and then, as his life progresses, also moving up in society by becoming a magistrate and buying a big house in the town. Out of these stereotypes of the poorest of the poor, on the verge of enslavement, working and striving at every opportunity to better their station in life, are derived that of the cavalier, or gentleman. These lowly indentured servants, over the course of a few generations, become wealthy landowners with pieces of property and slaves, known as plantations. Although true in some cases, most of such stories are only legends that satisfy the curious observer and, in reality, “the large majority of southern whites in 1860 did not did not own slaves.” Perhaps the most renowned among these myths is Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. Her novel, transformed into a timeless film, presents this idealized view of Southern cavalier society. Tara Farm, the prosperous O’Hara plantation prior to the war is utterly transformed from a land of beauty and hope into one of desolation. Scarlett O’Hara, the foolish but pretty Southern belle, plays the typical prototype caste against Southern women, focused solely on wealth and social status rather than the world around them. Large cities Southern cities, magnets for the wealthy and social elites, are utterly destroyed with the Union advance. In the wake of despondency left after the onslaught of the Northern enemy, Southerners reunite out of a sense of common loss. O’Hara even vows never to go hungry again, continuing to hold her staunch Southern pride despite their poverty. Even though, for decades, when the South is mentioned, many think of a plantation economy based on slavery, in reality, although true in some instances, this portrayal of Southern history is flawed on many levels, and its only accuracy lies in the commonality that Southerners experienced through hardship and great loss. Flannery O’Connor, in her short story entitled “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” displays many characteristics of a modern version of this Southern stereotype. Both the mother and grandmother are absorbed with making sure that “in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady”, once again showing a Southern preoccupation with social status and appearances. Grandmother, the cliché of elderly Southerners, is eager to tell everyone in the car with her on their road trip to Florida about all the history and all the memories that the land they pass marks in her life. Just as Grandmother mistakenly leads the family down a wrong path towards and imaginary estate which is actually in another state, many typical Southern images lead people towards skewed views of what Southern identity entails.
Taking into account the theory if white supremacy and the mythology of the plantation, another concept that defined the South is its view of liberty. David Hackett Fischer, in this book Albion’s Seed defined liberty in four ways, all of which relate to properly viewing the South. First of all, ordered freedom was a puritanical type of freedom that came to the North, specifically Massachusetts, when the Puritans left the Church of England, but acted as an exclusive sort of freedom in which only those who followed the orders and dictates of Puritan theology were truly free. Secondly, hegemonic freedom, or the belief that one should have the right of freedom but also the right to rule others, is a proponent of slavery. Thirdly, reciprocal freedom was a Quaker belief that entailed “withdrawal from the world.” Lastly, commonly found among those in the backcountry, was natural freedom where culture ruled. While these varying views of freedom represent respective parts of the country they, in reality represent the struggle of the South for its own identity while being terribly misunderstood. Similarly to the exclusivity of the Puritan ordered freedom, Southerners were, and in many ways still are, closed-minded towards advancement rather than open for change and differing beliefs systems and opinions. For example, while the North industrialized rather quickly following the Enlightenment, the South did not modernize until long after Reconstruction ended. Also,” identification with place and family” is evident throughout Southern history. During the Civil War it took the forms of both state and cause loyalty, while today it is seen in a distinct Southern pride seen just driving through any southern town, sported on many truck license plates in the form of a Confederate flag or even the staunch hold of restaurants on greasy but delicious recipes in a society ever moving towards health food stores and weight-loss health-food diets. Next, clearly visible through the institution of slavery is the Southern idea of hegemonic freedom. Whites enjoyed the ability to rule other races, yet disliked the idea that anyone, especially the North, could encroach upon that right. Seen today, as throughout history, is the idea of reciprocal freedom, as many Southerners resist outsiders and would rather retreat into their own world, even if it were a world of the past, rather than face change. Finally, the backcountry idea of natural freedom is rampant in the South, as Southerners have their own culture unique from the rest of the nation. For example, according to Boles,
“High technology, interstate highways, and industrial growth may threaten one vision of the South, but recorded country music, fast food outlets for fried chicken and biscuits and sausage, C-B radios in eighteen-wheelers crackling with good-ole-boy talk from their drivers and the working poor who have moved from the fields to the factories keep alive memories of the past. Southern speech patters and that signal form of ethnic identification, gastronomic preferences, show sure signs of resisting change.
All of these views of liberty culminate in the South in an attempt to produce a Southern identity. However, these differing views depict the commonality found within such diversity of the South.
As John B. Boles wrote in his piece The Difficulty of Consensus in the South, “the southern character is too complex for easy answers, and southerners- at least the publishing kind-enjoy the perennial search for southern identity.” While many people have attempted to define the South and Southernism, in reality, there is no easy answer to this dilemma. While white supremacy, stereotypes, commonality through diversity, and the southern idea of liberty all play integral roles in formulating Southern identity, they do not even begin to summarize what really is encompassed in the idea of one Southern identity.
Works Cited
Boles, John B. "The Difficulty of Consensus on the South." Major Problems in the History of the American South. Vol. II. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999. 19-27.
Cash, W. J. The Mind of the South. New York: Alfred A Knopf MCMXLVI, 1941.
Fischer, David H. Albion's Seed. Vol. I. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989.
O'Connor, Flannery. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor. 117-33.
O'Connor, Flannery. "Revelation." The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor. 488-509.
Phillips, Ulrich B. "The Central Theme of Southern History." American Historical Review 34 (1928): 30-43.
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