an inert mass, responsive only to the virtual command of the so-called better-class whites.
How thoroughly the "poor whites" were in the hands of their superiors is shown by the statement of a modern student of the South as to the reason why this particular class fought so valiantly for the Confederacy:
"An acute observer, a Confederate veteran, once said to me, 'When I was serving in the Army of Northern Virginia, I took great interest in finding out why mountaineers and poor whites, men who had never owned a slave, men who had no interest in slavery, were as keen for the war as any of us. I concluded that it was a war of caste. Rightly or wrongly, they had the notion that, if the North won, they would be reduced to the level of the negro. They were animated by an intense racial feeling. They fought for the racial idea.'"[1]
In this connection it is well to recall that slavery was never formally established by statute in any of the southern states. It was a "tolerated anomaly." Had an effort been made to pass such statutes, there is no telling what the effect might have been on these lethargic "poor whites "; it might have stirred them to realization that their own condition, in a community where they had so little political power, was not too secure.
We must not be led into the error of thinking that there was, in the beginning, any difference in ability between the journalists at the North and those of the South.
A southern critic of the South, Hinton Rowan Helper, insisted that there were able journalists there, and that it was the lack of enterprise and the lack of freedom which made them seem inferior to their brethren at the North. At this day, looking calmly back over this turbulent period, we can realize how true this statement was.
- ↑ N. W. Stephenson, Atlantic Monthly, June, 1919.
