Appoint a scribe, open a google doc here, and write down members names.

Part 1

Henry Grady was the editor of the Atlanta Constitution in the 1880s and was famous for promoting the idea of a “New South,”  often in speeches in the North.  Below are excerpts from his speeches.  After you have read these, consider the following questions:

What is new about the “New South”?  What is not new?  How does Grady see the South’s past?  He doesn’t talk about white supremacy in his Northern speeches, but does in his Dallas speech.   What does that tell us?  What do you think Grady’s speeches tell us about capitalism in the South?  Does our reading suggest any difficulties that the South might have in competing with with the North?  Should Mr. Carnegie be worried?

Speech in New York 1886

There was a south of slavery and secession, that South is dead. There is a South of union and freedom–that South, thank God is living, breathing, growing every hour.

The old South rested everything on slavery and agriculture, unconscious that these could neither give nor maintain healthy growth. This is said in no spirit of time-serving or apology. The South has nothing for which to apologize. She believes that the late struggle between the States was war and not rebellion, revolution and not conspiracy, and that her convictions were as honest as yours.

Speech in Dallas 1887

The supremacy of the white race of the South must be maintained forever, and the domination of the negro race resisted at all points and at all hazards, because the white race is the superior race.  This is the declaration of no new truth. It has abided forever in the marrow of our bones and shall run forever with the blood that feeds Anglo-Saxon hearts.

Speech in Boston 1889

I attended a funeral once in Pickens county in my State. . . .They buried him in the midst of a marble quarry: they cut through solid marble to make his grave; and yet a little tombstone they put above him was from Vermont. They buried him in the heart of a pine forest, and yet the pine coffin was imported from Cincinnati. They buried him within touch of an iron mine, and yet the nails in his coffin and the iron in the shovel that dug his grave were imported from Pittsburg. They buried him by the side of the best sheep-grazing country on the earth, and yet the wool in the coffin bands and the coffin bands themselves were brought from the North. The South didn’t furnish a thing on earth for that funeral but the corpse and the hole in the ground.

Now we have improved on that. We have got the biggest marble-cutting establishment on earth within a hundred yards of that grave. We have got a half-dozen woolen mills right around it, and iron mines, and iron furnaces, and iron factories. We are coming to meet you. We are going to take a noble revenge, as my friend, Mr. Carnegie, said last night, by invading every inch of your territory with iron, as you invaded ours twenty-nine years ago.

 

Part 2 (later in class)

C. Vann Woodward has claimed that the South in the late 1800s and early 1900s was a “colonial economy,”  colonized by the North.
1.  Write down where you see the North (and Northern industries and institutions) in the Tullos reading.  What role do you think they play?

2.  Do you think the Tullos reading supports the idea of a colonial economy? Why or why not?  What do you think the Cronon reading “The Busy Hive,”  suggests about a southern colonial economy?