have written as if the phrase indicated a new land and a new
civilization, utterly unlike anything that had existed before and
involving a sharp break with the history and the traditions of the past.
Nothing could be more untrue. Peoples do not in one generation or in two
rid themselves entirely of characteristics which have been developing
for centuries.

There is a New South, but it is a logical development from the Old
South. The civilization of the South today has not been imposed from
without but has been an evolution from within, though influenced by the
policy of the National Government. The Civil War changed the whole
organization of Southern society, it is true, but it did not modify its
essential attributes, to quote the ablest of the carpetbaggers, Albion
W. Tourgée. Reconstruction strengthened existing prejudices and created
new bitterness, but the attempt failed to make of South Carolina another
Massachusetts. The people resisted stubbornly, desperately, and in the
end successfully, every attempt to impose upon them alien institutions.

The story of Reconstruction has been told elsewhere.[1] A combination of
two ideas--high-minded altruism and a vindictive desire to humiliate a
proud people for partisan advantage--wrought mischief which has not been
repaired in nearly half a century. It is to be doubted, however, whether
Reconstruction actually changed in any essential point the beliefs of
the South. Left to itself, the South would not, after the War, have
given the vote to the negro. When left to itself still later, it took
the ballot away. The South would not normally have accepted the negro as
a social equal. The attempt to force the barrier between the races by
legislation with the aid of bayonets failed. Without the taste of power
during the Reconstruction period, the black South would not have
demanded so much and the determination of the white South to dominate