[Publisher’s Note, by Gene Kizer, Jr. – You learn so much from anything written by Dr. Clyde Wilson and all of it is imminently quotable. This article was published on the Abbeville Institute Blog October 16, 2025 with a note that it was originally published at Reckonin.com.]
Introduction
THERE IS A VAST and often contradictory literature describing and explaining the South. Various theories have been put forth to describe Southern distinctiveness. We might note that the greater part of this literature is written by outsiders who have found the South to be a problem-either the South was evil or it had by some peculiar twist of fate managed not to be completely “American.” Thus Southern distinctiveness has been explained as due to slavery and white supremacy, poverty, persistence of the frontier, preponderant rural life, a Celtic rather than an Anglo-Saxon culture. Although the North through most of American history has been as white supremacist as the South and before the defeat in war the South was quite prosperous. Which is to say, it is assumed that if people are not like Northerners then there is something wrong with them that needs to be discovered and explained. It is now near universally assumed that “the South” was entirely a product of black slavery. That is not true. Why not consider the South as itself? Why not read what the South had to say for itself rather than hostile latter day interpretations?
The Colonial Period, 1607-1775.
This is quite a long period in which a relatively small number of settlers populated and developed MD, VA, NC, SC, and GA. After the first settlements there was a small continuous arrival of new settlers but no major groups except the Scots-Irish in the early 1700s, French Huguenots, and some German communities. Much of the growth was natural increase of the population. (George Washington was already the fourth generation of his family in Virginia.).
At the time of the Revolution the South was the most dynamic and fastest growing part of the 13 colonies and the region most actively expanding westward. Tobacco was by far the most important export of North America, supplemented by other Southern crops such as rice, indigo, sea-island cotton, and naval stores. There was black slavery in all the 13 colonies (as well as in all other European colonies in the New World) but in what became the U.S. they were most concentrated in the Southern colonies. So the South has always been a biracial society, whereas the North had few black people before the 20th century. At the time of the Revolution slaves were a majority of the population in SC and a third or fourth in the other Southern colonies. But, as should not be forgotten, as much as 10 per cent in NY, CT, and RI where the holding of slaves as house servants and agricultural workers was common and completely respectable. For instance, Sam Adams and John Hancock of MA had bonded servants with them in Philadelphia when they signed the Declaration of Independence. Few Southerners engaged in importation of slaves from outside the colonies. This was the lucrative business of MA and RI.
The plantation became a distinctive and prominent feature of the South, though it must always be remembered that always the majority of Southern white families were independent small farmers. What is a plantation?. Originally it meant a new settlement, and the English spoke of “plantations” in Ireland and of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, the official name of that state. In time it came to describe a particular kind of agricultural establishment-a large establishment where slave labor resided and produced “staple crops.” Meaning crops that were not for home or local consumption but for sale in quantity as exports to the world market–in the 18th century tobacco and the other crops mentioned; in the 19th century cotton. (Plantations existed also in the Caribbean and South America for sugar, coffee, etc.) In the Old South large plantations were comparatively few. Most plantations were under 50 slaves and many under 20. The small plantation with a few slave families was the most common, where the whites lived, worked, and worshipped with their “people.”
Americans joined together for the Revolution and in a Union under the Articles and then the Constitution and they had a considerable amount of fellow feeling. They also had a strong realisation that in some respects they had different values and interests and lifestyles that might come into conflict. John Adams referred to Massachusetts as “my country” and General Washington and Thomas Jefferson had uncomplimentary things to say about New Englanders.
Here is a broad description of American regions in the colonial and early national period.The Middle States (NY, NJ, PA, DE) were diverse in population, religion, and economy. To English and Welsh from western and Midlands England were added Germans in PA and Dutch in NY and various other groups. Pennsylvania pioneered in religious tolerance. There were so many different sects they had to tolerate each other-Anglican, Quaker, Baptist, various German sects, etc. The economy was diverse with shipping, fur trade, growing of wheat and other food crops for export, and an early start on iron industry and related manufactures. The North was by no means culturally united until the decade before the Civil War. Remember that Washington Irving’s Hudson Valley Dutch people in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” disliked Ichabod Crane who had come over from New England. And the great early American writer, James Fenimore Cooper, extensively satirised the “Yankees” who invaded his NY State.
The South (MD, VA, NC, SC, GA), aside from the black people, had a more diverse population than New England and a less diverse population than the Middle States. The core population of the original lowcountry settlements were people of all social classes predominantly from the Counties south and west of London. There were considerable numbers of Germans, and some French Huguenots and Highland Scots. The Southern population was greatly expanded in the decades before the Revolution by Scots-Irish settling in the relatively empty piedmont regions of VA and the Carolinas, but it is an error to claim that the origins of the South are mostly “Celtic.” Scots-Irish were Protestants from the Scottish Lowlands who had pioneered in Ireland and then suffered economic discrimination from the English, and came to America in large numbers-such as the extended families of Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun. The Southern colonies were officially Anglican before the Revolution but Presbyterians, Baptists, Lutherans, and a little later Methodists were abundant and influential. Maryland was a haven for Catholics, and when in the early 1800s French Louisiana became American, the South had the largest Catholic population in the U.S. until the massive Irish immigration began in the 1840s. The South was also dynamic in its westward push. Charleston traders were sending pack trains regularly by the early 1700s to Mobile, Natchez on the Mississippi River. and the civilised Indian tribes beyond the Appalachians. Boone and others had already explored KY and TN by the time of the Revolution.
There has always been a lot of comment about aristocracy in the South, in relation to the plantation, both by those who think that such is valuable and attractive and those who think it is awful and unAmerican. We could understand Southern and American history better if we forgot about aristocracy and used the term GENTRY. By the time of American settlement England did not have much hereditary aristocracy (people of noble blood) because the aristocrats had killed each other off pretty well in the Wars of the Roses. The predominant social class in England was the gentry-meaning people who owned and made a good living from substantial land-holdings, whose bloodlines were not noble (i.e., related to royalty) but were long established and substantial, who had tenants and retainers, and who exercised local leadership-in morals, customs, justice, militia, etc. They often had coats of arms and they were recognised as leaders but they were not dictators to the independent small farmers, merchants, skilled artisans, and professionals who were much of the population. They had lots of younger sons ready to make their fortunes in America. We can think of the Southern planter class, who were infinitely important in the founding and development of the United States, best as gentry.
Much of American history writing explains separate Southern identity as simply a matter of the defense of slavery and racism. This assumes that the North and South were alike until Southerners about 1820 stopped criticising slavery and began defending it. It also assumes, falsely, that the North was never guilty of slavery and racism. But that is propaganda and nonsense. Cultural separateness was evident and recognized from earliest colonial times and long before the North abandoned slavery. All one has to do is to read the diaries of two Americans from the late 1600s-early 1700s. Cotton Mather, leading clergymen, scholar, and influential public man of Massachusetts, and William Byrd II, large landowner and prominent man of Virginia. Both were born in America of English descent. Mather’s diary is about how God is perpetually favouring him or thwarting him (but at any rate is always concerned with him), about the reception of his books and sermons, about the evil doings of other people. It is a depressing read-the record of an arrogant, self-centered, and self-righteous man with no apparent affection for or real interest in others. The hallmark of the Massachusetts elite to this day. Byrd’s diary records his devotions and studies, but it also records a lively social life, a strong interest in nature and other folks, a sense of humour about himself and the world, and even admissions of his own sins and shortcomings. It is a delightful and informative read.
New Englanders made a deliberate and concerted effort in the 19th century to create the belief that they deserved most of the honour of the American War of Independence, which was far from the truth. The South resisted Great Britain out of principle, the North for economic reasons. The War of Independence was stalemated in the North with the major cities occupied. The war was won in the South, by Southerners.
The views expressed at AbbevilleInstitute.org are not necessarily those of the Abbeville Institute.
Clyde Wilson
Clyde Wilson is a distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of South Carolina where he was the editor of the multivolume The Papers of John C. Calhoun. He is the M.E. Bradford Distinguished Chair at the Abbeville Institute. He is the author or editor of over thirty books and published over 600 articles, essays and reviews and is co-publisher of www.shotwellpublishing.com, a source for unreconstructed Southern books.
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